Mazars’ study on sustainable finance surveying 37 banks in North and South America, Asia and Europe indicates that progress is being made, especially in the UK and France, toward reaching ESG targets. Although improvement is still required in specific areas, banks and various agencies are joining forces to achieve sustainability goals.
Brexit looms large over all aspects of the UK’s banking sector, including hiring plans. Continued uncertainty about what direction the UK/EU divorce proceedings will go (if they go at all) has organisations on edge, but that didn’t stop them from hiring last year, research shows. Retaining existing top-notch talent was a priority, but attracting new, highly skilled professionals was also a common goal, with UK banks topping the hiring charts.
The Great Recession produced a number of aftershocks, including a tidal wave of regulations (with the?) intent on preventing the same event from ever happening again. A mismatch between increasingly complex and detailed international standards and ever more uneven implementation by national authorities ensued. Consistent, harmonized adoption of financial standards by all involved is necessary to ensure smooth global processes. Some suggestions are presented in this article.
For investors with an appetite for high returns even if they are seasoned with high risk, investment in frontier markets, the smallest economies in the developing world, may be worth considering. The best approach is to allocate only a small portion of a portfolio to these potentially profitable but likely volatile markets.