Global news and insight for corporate financial professionals
A multi-billion-dollar industry faces evolution, not revolution, after 18 months of turmoil. For a while—just a while—back then, it looked like the game was over for the world’s accounting giants. When Enron’s late-2001 death spin sucked in accounting firm Andersen, ...
Leading cash management experts met recently in New York to discuss the key issues in an industry that’s ever more crucial. Global Finance’s publisher, Joseph Giarraputo, moderated. Global Finance: How does the US Patriot Act affect you and your clients’ ...
Doomsayers predicted financial meltdown when a left-wing candidate won the Brazilian presidency. So far, they are wrong. The tentative honeymoon between the Brazilian government and the international financial community should last at least through the year’s first half as global ...
A CFO is at the heart of change in a Swiss icon. It’s the day after the company’s annual results bonanza, and Novartis CFO Raymond Breu is sitting comfortably in the Basle headquarters of the Swiss pharmaceutical company. Breu has ...
With a global reach but only three primary players, the powerful credit-rating business may finally be getting an overhaul and some new competitors. By the end of March the US Securities and Exchange Commission will put out a ‘concept release’ ...
The Japanese blue chip is leading a makeover of the way that country’s companies are governed. When Japan’s Sony announced in late January that it intended to separate its supervisory and executive functions, it became the first large Japanese corporation ...
Local knowledge is important, but tech requirements are prompting consolidation in the world of sub-custodians. Stephen Brown, regional network manager for Northern Trust Global custody may be maturing into a remorselessly technology- driven business, and the trillions of dollars of ...
On January 28 representatives from Global Finance’s World’s Best Companies gathered in New York’s Palace Hotel for an award ceremony.This year 35 awards were presented to recipients from 22 industry sectors, from airlines to wholesale. Winners were in attendance from ...
Global Finance selects the leaders in the $1.25 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. The foreign exchange market, with daily turnover of $1.25 trillion, remains the world’s biggest financial market, even though trading has dwindled somewhat following the introduction of the euro. ...
Local knowledge is important, but tech requirements are prompting consolidation in the world of sub-custodians. Stephen Brown, regional network manager for Northern Trust Global custody may be maturing into a remorselessly technology- driven business, and the trillions of dollars of ...
THE AMERICAS Emerging Markets Fund Leads BLDRS Volume The baskets of listed depositary receipts, or BLDRS, a family of four exchange-traded funds launched on the Nasdaq Stock Market in November 2002, are gradually gaining investor acceptance, if trading volume is ...
Global Finance selects the leaders in the $1.25 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. The foreign exchange market, with daily turnover of $1.25 trillion, remains the world’s biggest financial market, even though trading has dwindled somewhat following the introduction of the euro. ...
FRANCE Whoever it was who said that inflation was dead forgot to tell bond investors. They’re snapping inflation-linked bonds as a long-term hedge against rising prices, and that swelling demand is tempting new issuers into the market. In February Reseau ...
UNITED STATES As timings go, it could be better.With the United States preparing for war in Iraq, financial information provider Dow Jones launched a family of new Islamic indexes at the end of February—including one that lists blue-chip American stocks. ...
We have always been run along business principles.” —Eitan Raff, chairman of Bank Leumi, the bank founded by Thedor Herzl ISRAEL Eitan Raff Don’t do anything stupid after I’m dead,” was the supposed deathbed injunction of Thedor Herzl, the legendary ...
SWITZERLAND Is this, finally, the future of private banking? UBS, the Swiss bank that runs the world’s leading private banking operation, said in February that it would combine five venerable private banking outfits it owns into one. Announcing the move, ...
EUROPE William Morrison Supermarkets touched off a bidding war for rival British supermarket chain Safeway with an offer valued at $6.7 billion in stock and debt. The Safeway board withdrew its recommendation that shareholders accept the offer after Britain’s top ...
THE AMERICAS The US corporate bond market rallied strongly in the early weeks of 2003, with lower-rated bonds outperforming higherrated issues. As cash positions remain plentiful, interest rates are holding at historic lows, and spreads of corporate bonds to Treasury ...
Currency Traders Expect China To Revalue Yuan ASIA Participants in the foreign exchange market have caught a whiff of possible changes afoot in China’s tightly controlled currency regime. For the first time in many years, long-term forward currency contracts are ...
THE AMERICAS Emerging Markets Fund Leads BLDRS Volume The baskets of listed depositary receipts, or BLDRS, a family of four exchange-traded funds launched on the Nasdaq Stock Market in November 2002, are gradually gaining investor acceptance, if trading volume is ...
CEOs are saying, ‘We want to understand our customers better today and use technology to be more effective. UNITED STATES Jeff Dunn of Active Decisions Jeff Dunn says he’s in the business of selling companies a technological version of a ...
JAPAN Toshihiko Fukui Call it the revenge of the old guard. The late February nomination of Toshihiko Fukui as the next governor of the Bank of Japan had all the marks of a successful fightback by the forces that dominated ...
THE NETHERLANDS When Icarus flew too close to the sun and melted the wax on his artificial wings, he plummeted to the sea. By comparison, Cees van der Hoeven seems to have been held up by wires. The CEO of ...
"As businessmen we are pretty young, and so we haven’t many traditions of corporate behavior as a country.” RUSSIA Mikhail Fridman From ‘robber baron’ to upright businessman in one sweeping move: That’s the trajectory the reputation of Alfa Group’s Mikhail ...
UNITED KINGDOM Sushil Wadhwani As a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) from 1999 until last summer, Sushil Wadhwani was part of a team that helped provide the financial foundation for 40 consecutive quarters of economic ...
