Western Europe Archives

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Banking

NEW CEO CHANGES PACE FOR STANDARD CHARTERED | NEWSMAKERS

Newsmakers | United Kingdom The appointment of Bill Winters to replace Peter Sands as CEO of Standard Chartered has been universally welcomed, as the troubled bank saw profits fall by 30% last year compared with 2013 levels.

Banking

RBS: A LEANER, MEANER CORPORATE BANKING MACHINE?

Banking | United Kingdom In its 2014 annual report published in February, RBS announced that CIB, which includes global transaction services, will reduce its geographical footprint from 38 to 13 countries.

Banking

Is RBS Getting Out Of Transaction Services?

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.

Capital Raising & Corporate Finance

FRANCE: WINEMAKER PLANS IPO USING CROWDFUNDING

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.

Banking

SANTANDERS CLOUD GAMBIT: WILL MORE BANKS FOLLOW THEIR LEAD?

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 Raising & Corporate Finance

McDonalds CEO: Brit Becomes The New “Big Mac”

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.

Capital Raising & Corporate Finance

EU TAX REFORM: VAT REGULATION HITS SMES

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

Banking

SANTANDERS MASSIVE CAPITAL INCREASE: MORE EUROPEAN BANKS TO FOLLOW

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.

Capital Raising & Corporate Finance

SEPA: A SPRINGBOARD TO REAL-TIME PAYMENTS

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.

Capital Raising & Corporate Finance

‘GOOGLE TAX’ ON MULTINATIONALS HEATS UP GLOBAL CORPORATE TAX DEBATE

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.

Economics, Policy & Regulation

ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING FIGHTER CHAIRS KEY VATICAN UNIT

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.

Banking

ING COMPLETES BAILOUT REPAYMENT

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