A good night generally, with various cocktail and drinks receptions, dinners and dalliances. Being on UK clocks, most of us Europeans were then awake and active at four in the morning, and looking for action on SIBOS day two.
My own morning began with a nice meet up for breakfast with JPMorgan.
JPM were rolling out research they had just completed on the major counterparty trends in treasury services worldwide.
That’s bound to keep you awake over an early breakfast isn’t it?
Actually, it did keep me awake, mainly because it felt like early afternoon my time but also because it showed that 37% of banks currently provide Renminbi (RMB) services to their customers but ,of those that do not, over half (52%) intend to in the next year.
Wowser, those little Chinese currency units are moving.
This was based upon research with over 100 banks that JPM sponsored with FIMetrix, a market research company.
There was lots more in there but this hit me as it dove-tailed with other news this morning.
First the headline: Could China help Europe conquer its debt woes? which, when reading further, brings to light the importance of China today as the article states that “China suggested that it might be prepared to help Europe by acting as a buyer of last resort by making a major purchase of euro-denominated bonds.”
Combine this with the news that “Investors have pulled more money from U.S. equity funds since the end of April than in the five months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., adding to the $2.1 trillion rout in American stocks”, and you can see the world axis of finance is shifting from West to East.
And yes, I did find John Havens speech far more interesting in print than in person this moarning, as I anticipated yesterday.
The reason being that he did say some things that made sense, and the most critical quote today is that “emerging markets and the consequent rise of intra-emerging market trade and capital flows is one of the most important economic trends of our time. “
Blindingly obvious when you see the headlines this morning, and why JPM and other banks are so focused upon RMB flows today.
In fact, RMB has been a key focus of SIBOS, and I’ll be interested in the Thursday afternoon session focused specifically on this area therefore.
Meanwhile, post breakfast, it’s off to the innotribe again …
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
