Old Money

Saudi Aramco’s jumbo IPO is taxiing towards take off, though the timing and any co-listing locations along with Riyadh have yet to be revealed. London and New York’s exchanges are eager to host a co-listing, with Toronto, Hong Kong and Singapore also in the frame for what promises to be the biggest ever IPO, valuing the company at $2tr.

Bad banks from Barings to Bradford & Bingley

Reflecting on the run on the Rock, a full decade on.

At 7:30pm on September 16, 1992, or Black Wednesday, at the end of a frenzied day in the markets the UK chancellor of the exchequer Norman Lamont announced that Britain was leaving the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System. It was a critical change in policy direction from the path of monetary convergence with the Europe and the first Brexit.

There’s plenty of arguing about Brexit, but in finance, euro clearing stands out as a particularly bitter regulatory fight. At issue is London’s place as the host of euro trading — and it’s going to go down to the wire.

Banks are in the grip of an era of regulatory fines. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that since the 2008 financial crisis banks globally have paid $321bn in fines, an average of $40bn a year. Most have been levied by US banking agencies, with the EU claiming that it has levied 800% more in bank penalties than its 28 member states have added together. The record fine to date is the $13bn paid by JP Morgan in 2013 in settlement of mortgage backed securities (MBS) violations.

Talk of a ‘21st Century Glass-Steagall’ is swirling around Washington and Wall Street. What this might mean in practice is hazy, but the phrase Glass-Steagall is plainly a powerful political talisman.

Short sellers and their schemes have a murky past. From the Dutch East India Company to Borussia Dortmund.

Once France broke international records for sovereign defaults, thanks to wars, money printing and dodgy liability management.

Kaleidoscopic corporate restructurings have long been a feature at Credit Suisse. There appear to have been three drivers – geographical balance, shuffling the deck in its investment banking activities and a noted propensity for being accident prone.

At 8:15pm on November 8, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi stunned the country by announcing in an unscheduled television broadcast that at midnight Rs500 ($7.50) and Rs1,000 ($15) banknotes would be “demonetised”.

It’s a back-to-the-future new year for Barclays as it forges ahead with its strategic repositioning — the latest moves in what feel like decades-long twists and turns into and out of Africa and investment banking.

Addressing the nation on television in November 1967, British prime minister Harold Wilson announced the devaluation of the pound and famously declared that "it does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket, has been devalued."

Deutsche Bank and falling foul of the rules is nothing new. It built its investment banking operation acquiring businesses battling reputational and legal risk.

The last round of IMF lending to developed market countries (before the European sovereign crisis) was 40 years ago this autumn — when Britain was locked out of the capital markets and had to go ‘cap in hand’ to the Fund.

The world’s oldest bank has trodden a 500-year line between the sacred and the profane.

Financial centres come and go, but they're mostly very resilient. London's been near the top of its game since the Napoleonic Wars. Will it take Brexit in its stride?

Predictions from both sides in Britain’s EU referendum suggest economic disaster if the country votes the ‘wrong’ way. But history shows the dangers of doom-mongering.

Argentina made its debut in the international capital markets 192 years ago. It has managed eight defaults since then, so are things any different now?

‘Rogue traders’ have struck again — Tijane Thiam, Credit Suisse’s chief executive, doesn’t seem sure quite how his traders ran up such large positions, but they’re being blamed for $750m of losses and writedowns since October 2015. The Swiss bank’s distressed debt desk joins a long line of unauthorised big losers stretching back four decades.

“The rate of interest is never negative,” declared John Maynard Keynes in his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935). Keynes was expressing the universally held view that the nominal interest rate had a “zero lower bound” (ZLB) — a holder of a £5 note would simply hold it as cash earning no interest rather than placing it on deposit at, say, minus 1%, making it worth £4.95 in a year’s time.

"Big Oil peers into the abyss," declared The Economist in the summer of 1986, hailing the world’s third oil shock. Its famous forerunners of 1973 and 1979 featured huge OPEC price hikes. The 1986 shock, by contrast, starred a 70% price fall — from $32 a barrel to below $10.

Britain's banking market is a frenzy of new arrivals and challengers to the old order. The Bank of England even set up a New Banks Unit this week to welcome them all. But for most of history, the trend has run in the opposite direction.

Currency wars are back in the headlines. First it was Japan’s endeavours to weaken the yen. Then, in August, China’s surprise 3% devaluation of its pegged exchange rate against the dollar, with some analysts predicting an eventual depreciation of 15%-20%. Now the US is raising interest rates while Europe pursues further easing, risking a soaring dollar, wilting euro, and heightened danger of US accusations of currency manipulation.