DeVere Group: Decisive Move Into Private and Investment Banking

One of the world’s largest financial consultancy services providers has moved into banking. Late last year, deVere Group acquired the St Lucia branch of Arton Bank in order to gain a foothold in private banking, and earlier this month the

Read More

Davos: Growing Awareness of Growing Unease

William F Browder of Hermitage Capital Management has been a Davos regular for over twenty years, unfailingly embarking every January on a pilgrimage to the Swiss resort town to mingle with his peers, swap experiences, and ponder the challenges ahead.

Read More

Gavin Wilson, CEO IFC AMC: Mobilising Private Capital for Sustainable Development

Building and upgrading the infrastructure to underpin sustainable development in emerging markets and elsewhere requires additional investments estimated at around one trillion dollars annually. To support expected economic growth rates, and meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the McKinsey

Read More

European Investment Bank: Investment Plan for Europe

Investment Plan for Europe – Paradigm Shift in the Use of Public Resources The Marshall Plan did much to inject life into the post-war recovery of Europe. Initially comprising $13 billion, mostly in direct aid, the plan constituted a substantial

Read More

Otaviano Canuto, IMF: What Happened to World Trade?

World trade suffered another disappointing year in 2015, experiencing a contraction in merchandise trade volumes during the first half and only a low recovery during the second half (Figure 1). While last year’s trade performance can be associated to the

Read More

Ann Low, US Department of State: Good Corporate Governance is Good Business

OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises. Over the past decade, cross-border trade and investment by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has surged. According to the OECD, whereas in 2005, there were only three SOEs in the Fortune Global 50 list

Read More

Building Stronger Governance and Compliance Foundations in Sub-Saharan Africa

Analysts, politicians, economists and media pundits have kicked off 2016 with a largely pessimistic outlook for the global economy. Clearly none of us can predict where the economy will be in twelve months but we do know that we are

Read More

Michael Pettis: Money Is Not Created Out of Thin Air

A recurring conversation I have with clients concerns the ability of banks to create credit, and of governments to monetise debt, and whether this ability is the solution to or the cause of financial instability and economic crisis. Monetarists and structuralists

Read More

Otaviano Canuto, IMF: Whither Emerging Markets Foreign Exchange Reserves

After a exponential rise in foreign exchange reserves accumulation by emerging markets from 2000 onwards, the tide seems to have turned south since mid-2014. Changes in capital flows and commodity prices have been major factors behind the inflection, with the

Read More

From the editor: The Art of the Doomsayer – Crisis? What Crisis?

Just as a broken watch still tells the right time twice a day, the persistent doomsayer will eventually be vindicated. In the financial world, entire reputations are built on predicting recessions, if not depressions: keep it up long enough and

Read More