Western Europe

Milestones | Greece
On March 3, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development approved a request from Athens to invest directly in Greece.

Royal Bank Of Scotland plans to vastly scale back its Transaction Services business. It is a further sign of the challenging times faced by global transaction banks.

Trends | Global Banking
On the surface at least, Spain’s Banco Santander and Cloud storage providers do not appear to have much in common.

Capital Markets | Equity Capital Raising
Burgundy vineyard Domaine Chanzy expects to be the first company to conduct an initial public offering using crowdfunding, which enables companies to raise money from members of the public, typically via the Internet.
 

McDonalds appointment of British-born Steve Easterbrook as its new CEO has both surprised and delighted analysts—concerned by the burger behemoth’s first annual decline in 30 years.

Milestones | European Union
Regulators had Web giants like Google and Apple in their sites when they framed a new value-added tax (VAT) regulation for businesses selling digital products into the European Union
 

Special Report | SEPA
With SEPA migration projects mostly completed, it is time for treasurers to start thinking about the next steps in regulatory compliance and process automation.

Trends | Bank Capitalization
As Spaniards returned from the Los Reyes Magos (Epiphany) holiday, Spain’s Santander, Europe’s biggest bank, sold the equivalent of nearly 10% of its capital in one day, raising €7.5 billion ($8.7 billion) in cash and bringing required ratios in line with those of the banking industry.
 

UK Corporate Tax | Trends
Britain likely will succeed in taxing multinational companies at a 25% rate on their UK operations beginning in April, without violating international tax treaties, analysts say, but tensions are rising between countries on suspicions that MNCs are engaging in global tax evasion.

Website design is becoming more important than ever, particularly in areas such as ease of use, security features, integrated functions and aesthetics.
 

Netherlands | Milestone
As a part of the restructuring agreement between ING, the Dutch government and the European Commission, ING agreed to several of what it called “bans,” according to an email sent by a company spokesman to Global Finance

Vatican | Newsmakers
René Brülhart, known as the “James Bond of the financial world” for his high-profile role in cases such as the return of assets from Saddam Hussein to post-war Iraq and the uncovering of the Siemens bribery scandal, has become chairman of the Vatican’s anti-money-laundering unit.

 

Shareholder Activism | Management
Shareholder activism—when investors in a company use their equity as a lever to pressure management—is booming and will grow dramatically on both sides of the Atlantic through mid-2016

View From The Top
Global Finance speaks to leading executives at the World’s Safest Banks.

FX Supplement 2014 | Overview
Will regulation repair forex’s damaged reputation—and are banks ready for the culture change?             

Capital Markets | Mergers & Acquisitions
Global cross-border mergers and acquisitions totaled $1.1 trillion during the first nine months of 2014, more than double the level of the same period a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters.

COUNTRY REPORT | CYPRUS
Amid continuing harsh austerity measures, things are—very slowly—starting to recover, alongside restructuring that will change the focus of the economy. GDP in 2014 should contract by 3.5% before flattening out next year, with 0.2% growth forecast.

Europe’s bond market grew 50% faster than the global rate during the first nine months of the year—by 4.6% year-on-year—but small foreign rating agencies jockeying for a piece of the action are crying foul.

Newsmakers | Belgium
After almost five months of parliamentary squabbling since the elections of May 25th, Belgium finally inaugurated a new government in mid-October.

Trends | Foreign Exchange
The global imbalance created by Europe’s huge current-account surplus and excess savings has created a glut of euros that could condemn the single currency to broad-based weakening.