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As with many Asian financial sectors, Malaysia's banks have withstood the global recession well thanks, in large part, to the Bank Negara Malaysia's proactive supervision. Corporate balance sheets, meanwhile, remain [...]

Alternative liquidity, the likes of which have served to fundamentally transform both the US and European equity trading landscape, is growing rapidly in Asia. But no form of alternative liquidity [...]

In cracking down on the banking sector, global regulators are in serious danger of hitting private sector companies by mistake. A slew of impending regulatory measures which aim to make [...]

The Asia-Pacific region has experienced an impressive recovery over the past year, fuelled by extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus, amounting to more than $950bn, according to data from Bloomberg. In [...]

Investment bankers claim there is no such thing as an easy deal, however frothy the market. This adage rings particularly true in the Asia-Pacific region, which, despite leading the global [...]

When the European Commission's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) was first unveiled in 2004, many market-watchers merrily predicted the demise of Europe's incumbent stock exchanges. With the outdated consolidation [...]

May this year marked a milestone for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), bringing what Ester Levanon, the exchange's CEO, calls its 'graduation day': MSCI, the closely followed global index [...]

Pakistan is a country confronting a range of daunting challenges. Embroiled in a war on its lawless north-western border with Afghanistan, Pakistan has experienced a dramatic deterioration in its domestic [...]

Nepal's troubled 20-year transition from monarchical rule to a multi-party democracy has involved rebel insurgency, a bloody 10-year civil war and ongoing political turmoil. Following a 2006 peace accord, under [...]

Sandwiched between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, the former Soviet Bloc country of Uzbekistan is one of the lesser-known economies situated in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Boasting a much larger [...]

If Europe's embattled finance ministers think the unpopular task of fiscal consolidation is tough, they should spare a thought for Omar Zakhilwal. Appointed to Afghan president Hamid Karzai's government as [...]

An oil-rich economy, Azerbaijan was enjoying a major economic boom when Samir Sharifov was plucked from his role as the head of Azerbaijan's State Oil Foundation and appointed minister of [...]

What should a bank's IT environment look like? How much of it should be operated by vendors and IT service providers? How should banks pay for IT? And what are [...]

After more than 18 months of intense discussion, a good degree of confused politics and some constructive debate, the much-anticipated post-crisis regulatory agenda is beginning to emerge. In the UK, [...]

Few banks can claim to have captured more than 50% of their domestic retail banking market, but with 5.2 million customers in a population of just 10.4 million, Ceska sporitelna [...]

Who is Generation Y? Broadly, Generation Y shares the same experience of the digital world. They can be classified as people who have been born after the 1980s, they have [...]

From online fraud to data theft, the range and incidence of fraud are growing: UK-based identity theft alone has soared some 20% during the past year, according to Cifas, the [...]

Hard-hit by the disastrous global slump in demand that battered several export-driven economies during the end of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, Japan has spent the past year [...]

'One year ago, we met in crisis. Today, we meet in hope.' These were the opening words of Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), at the opening [...]

The Vietnamese economy has endured a fast-paced if jerky ride in recent years. Boasting gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates in excess of 8% for both 2006 and 2007, driven [...]

By the beginning of December 2009, the prime brokerage industry was in a state of disrepair: Bear Stearns had been removed from the picture and Lehman Brothers was gone for [...]

Ideas are the lifeblood of the information economy and large institutions are increasingly devoting more time and resources to fostering potentially transformative and profit-boosting innovations. The world of technology has [...]

The central bank governor of Sri Lanka, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, recently visited London at a seminal moment in his country's modern history: following last year's defeat of Sri Lanka's ethnic [...]

Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997, policy-makers among the 10 nations comprising the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) have paid lip-service to the concept of greater pan-ASEAN economic [...]

The first female governor in the Bank of Thailand's (BOT) 64-year history and the third female central bank governor appointed worldwide, Tarisa Watanagase cuts a graceful if slightly beguiling figure [...]

The retail banking and consumer finance sector in Vietnam has historically been extremely limited, with the majority of earnings derived in recent years from the thumping corporate lending business. But [...]

The participants John Mason - CEO, DClear Utilities SmartStream Michelle Price - Business editor, The Banker What is the significance of reference data and can you explain the challenges faced [...]

In the lull before London and New York packed up for Christmas, BATS Exchange, the ambitious four-year-old trading venue that has rapidly become the third largest exchange in the US, [...]

Convivial and relaxed, Jim Bolger, the prime minister of New Zealand between 1990 and 1997, is in a luxurious position: as chairman of New Zealand's young but fast-growing state-owned retail [...]

Technology chiefs at the world's fastest exchanges sit at the bleeding edge of corporate IT. Few know this better than Carl-Magnus Hallberg, senior vice-president, global IT services at mega-exchange operator [...]

The New Year is a critical period in Thailand's economic calendar as wealthy Western tourists pour into the south-east Asian country making for a vibrant, if often over-crowded, atmosphere in [...]

Truly transformative technologies emerge only a few times a century. The internet has undoubtedly proved one such consciousness-changing innovation, reshaping as it has the human perception of information, communication, space [...]

Attempting to enter a marketplace characterised by ongoing uncertainty, widespread consumer disgruntlement, declining profitability and hyper-consolidation may strike many onlookers as an act of commercial suicide. But in the UK, [...]

The participants What lessons do you think the crisis has delivered to banks' back offices globally? It has offered a number of lessons. The first is that, while obviously the [...]

Amid the long-term rise in demand for Asian stocks and as the first saplings of competition emerge in Asia, many of the continent's exchanges are attempting to modernise their infrastructures [...]

Rarely, if ever, does the arcane world of electronic equities trading preoccupy the glamorous hosts of US network television. This summer, however, the little-known and understood enclave of the US [...]

Peaceful and commercially underdeveloped, Bandar Seri Begawan, the modest capital city of Brunei, belies the enormous wealth for which the tiny south-east Asian country has so long been famed. Situated [...]

The ever-evident importance and expanding cost base of the IT estate continues to cast the IT function in a stronger and stronger light. But with the budgetary constraints imposed by [...]

At the age of 66, Margarito Teves, secretary of the Department of Finance (DoF) of the Philippines, cuts a grandfatherly figure: courteous, calm and softly spoken, he appears in many [...]

Nestor Tan, president of Banco de Oro (BDO), a rising star among the Philippines banking sector, enters the room unannounced and unaccompanied. It is a very low-key entrance for the [...]

Asia has long-been regarded as a competition-averse, exchange-dominated marketplace. But this summer offered the first hints that small structural changes are afoot in the region, with the creation of a [...]

Though few economies in Asia have managed to avoid the global economic downturn, the Philippines has come pretty close. While the archipelago has not emerged entirely unscathed from the global [...]

It has been a hectic year for central bank governors globally as the twin pressures of managing monetary policy and shoring up the local banking sector have made for many [...]

Behind each headline-grabbing merger and acquisition to emerge from the global financial crisis sits an oft-overlooked and frequently overworked IT team. In an industry defined by its IT capability, it [...]

Never before has the International Monetary Fund (IMF) been required to work so hard, and so quickly. As watchdog of the global financial system, lender of ultimate last resort, and [...]

The ever-lengthening shadow of climate change continues to loom over the debate on the future of global economic growth. Increasingly, however, the twin challenge of energy security is exercising policy-makers [...]

The Participants How has the process of communicating with the customer changed and developed in recent years? Howard Boville: It has changed significantly. The number of channels has increased and [...]

High volatility is often an attractive characteristic of commodities markets, in particular energy commodities such as oil, gas and power. Even so, the extreme volatility seen in several energy commodities [...]

The UK retail banking industry is under siege and not merely at the hands of the financial crisis. Even before the meltdown, trust among UK banking consumers, disgruntled with poor [...]

THERE IS SOME CONFLICTING DATA IN THE MARKETPLACE REGARDING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) EXPENDITURE LEVELS: WHAT IS SMARTSTREAM'S EXPERIENCE HERE? The banks are not all equal: there are a lot of [...]