The Covid-19 pandemic created some waves in the foreign exchange markets over the last couple of years, but the re-emergence of global inflation and inflation-fighting central banks has truly rocked the currency world this year.
The largest company in the world can fluctuate day to day, even minute by minute, depending what measurement is used. Tesla began 2022 as the world's fifth largest company by market cap and ended the year in 11th place after their CEO Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
Global Finance editor Andrea Fiano interviews Ásgeir Jónsson, Central Bank Governor of Iceland during Global Finance's World's Best Bank Awards at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on October 15th.
Long considered one of the less dynamic areas of global finance, the global custody industry is increasingly moving to the forefront of product and process innovation.
Burgeoning investor interest in emerging markets and in alternative investment classes, for example, is prompting custodians to develop global systems with a single interface that can handle complex cross-border transactions. And as banks increasingly compete on a worldwide basis, they are looking to their custodians to provide services that allow them to efficiently manage money and assets throughout their global networks.
The growing demands on the custodians are prompting a continuation of the industry’s decade-long consolidation. Industry giants are snapping up specialists, such as technology providers and outsourcers, as they try to maneuver ahead of their competitors. At the same time, the market for custodians is growing. The total custody assets declared by the 14 companies in this year’s guide grew from less than $39 trillion at the end of 2003 to almost $45 trillion by the end of last year—an increase of more than $5.75 trillion. With global banks’ increasing dependence on the custodians, that number will only continue to grow.