Get the latest updates on stock markets, economic trends, business insights, personal finance tips, and more
Published on
An EU committee made up of experts from member states voted on Tuesday to ban imports of Brazilian meat starting 3 September due to the use of antimicrobials to stimulate animal growth.
The decision to remove Brazil from the list of countries that comply with EU food safety standards comes as the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement between the EU and Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay provisionally entered into force on 1 May.
The deal, which liberalises trade of agri-product between both sides of the Atlantic, remains fiercely opposed by EU farmers, who fear that different production standards on both sides of the Atlantic will create unfair competition from Latin American imports.
“The fact that the Union is able to enforce the rules is essential for trust, a level playing field, and good relations with our trading partners,” an EU diplomat told Euronews.
An official with knowledge of the file said that the vote was unanimous and makes Brazil the first country removed from the list of states complying with EU restrictions on antimicrobial use in animals.
The list of third countries which comply with EU requirements, and therefore can export food-producing animals to the EU, will be formally adopted in the coming days.
The European Commission has consistently said EU food safety rules would continue to apply to agricultural products imported from Latin America after the deal enters into force.
Commission’s spokesperson Eva Hrncirova confirmed to Euronews that from 3 September Brazil will no longer be able export to the EU commodities such as bovine, equine, poultry, eggs, aquaculture, honey and casings.
“Trade agreements do not change our rules,” Hrncirova said, adding: “The Commission establishes the Union’s mandatory sanitary and phytosanitary standards, and both our farmers and exporters from third countries have to comply with them.”
Brussels has also negotiated safeguards aimed at protecting EU farmers, including mechanisms to monitor potential market disruption from a surge in imports from Mercosur countries. Quotas were also introduced for sensitive products, including poultry and meat.
Once compliance with the safety rules is demonstrated by Brazil, the EU will be able to resume the imports, and Brazil will be able to benefit from the same tariff relief as the other Mercosur countries.
Photo by Rodrigo Abd for The Associated Press, May 2019
The window international operators had waited years opened overnight in Venezuela. The interim government has signed new hydrocarbon and mining laws. US officials have been in and out of Caracas. The government of Delcy Rodríguez has landed several new deals in a matter of months. Everything is happening so fast that elements that seemed obvious when Nicolás Maduro was in charge are suddenly overlooked or underdiscussed.
For the last thirteen years I have worked in indigenous communities in the Venezuelan Amazon, in border towns along the Colombian border, and in barrios in and around Caracas. The Venezuelan towns and territories are not the ones the companies coming back will remember.
Almost eight million people left Venezuela during the crisis, one of the largest displacement events in history. The oil-dependent towns of Zulia, Anzoátegui, and Monagas were not spared, nor were mining communities in Bolívar and Amazonas. In some places, a large share of the working-age population is simply gone. What remains is older, poorer, and more dependent on informal survival than the country they left.
Institutions have followed. Hospitals in oilfield regions operate, where they operate at all, at drastically reduced capacity. Schools have hemorrhaged teachers. Local government in many areas has ceased to perform basic functions. Chronic blackouts compound everything. Formal PDVSA employment, the organizing principle of community life in these regions, collapsed along with the company. In many places there are no longer legitimate interlocutors left to negotiate with as the local civic infrastructure that companies elsewhere take for granted has been hollowed alongside everything else.
Once the rigs come back, however, these towns will not stay hollow. They will hastily be filled with returnees, prospectors, informal traders, and internal migrants chasing rumored hiring. The Mining Arc has already shown what this looks like: since 2016, gold has pulled in shifting populations of miners, intermediaries, and military protection chains, with towns like Tumeremo and El Callao expanding and contracting to the rhythm of the frontier economy.
In most resource markets, companies enter with a clear distinction between the formal environment and the informal risks around it. That distinction broke down in Venezuela a long time ago.
Research by Insight Crime and the International Crisis Group has documented how, over a decade, the line between State oversight and participation in illicit extraction dissolved. Individuals linked to the military and the ruling party benefited from illegal mining, using it as political currency and to cement alliances with Colombia’s ELN and FARC dissident factions. Gold mining was estimated to generate more than $2.2 billion last year, much of it through channels that evaded oversight. In the oil sector, criminal groups have been documented siphoning roughly 30% of fuel in some regions.
“There is deep political skepticism in the communities. Many do not believe that this time will actually bring lasting reforms,” a senior humanitarian told me.
The Rodríguez-led interim government intends to change this, and the foreign policy pressure behind the new laws is real. But the continuity problem deserves precision. The recent turnover at the top of the security apparatus—Defense, military intelligence, the presidential guard—was a selective reshuffle within the chavista system, not an outsider takeover or institutional rupture. The personnel and chains of command sitting inside this supposedly new architecture are not new. Informal structures built over a decade do not dissolve with a reshuffle among the same political elite.
Informal actors are not parallel to the formal system, but intertwined with it, which presents a complex practical consequence to the investors. Companies entering these zones will negotiate, in practice, with all of them at once: the local political boss, the garrison commander asking for vacuna, the colectivo that controls the access road, the gestor who can speed a permit, the sindicato, the guerrilla commander. The single regulator is a fiction.
These are not communities without prior experience of extraction. Many have decades of it, enough to have formed hard views about what operators promise, what they deliver, and what gets left behind. Those views were then tested against a decade of watching investment withdraw, oil spills go unaddressed, and industry jobs disappear.
The environmental record is severe and specific. Aging pipelines and wells around Lake Maracaibo, once the engine of the Venezuelan oil industry, have left slicks visible from the air, fishing communities along its shores watching their catch collapse, and a persistent green bloom of algae fed by untreated sewage and hydrocarbon residue. In mining regions, studies have found that up to 90% of Indigenous women in the Orinoco Mining Arc carry dangerously high mercury levels. These are not abstract concerns. They are the lived experience of the population any operator will meet.
The damage is also in the memory of being told it would be different. Communities have seen “openings” before. A senior humanitarian, who has spent years working on community engagement throughout the country, put it to me while I was writing this piece: “There is deep political skepticism in the communities. Many do not believe that this time will actually bring lasting reforms, and that hardens their initial positions. Even well-intentioned and hopeful promises can be met with radical distrust.”
Sanctions, fiscal terms, and reservoirs can be modeled from afar. The social landscape of a specific Zulia oilfield town or a Bolívar Indigenous territory cannot.
For an operator arriving with standard community-engagement language, the problem is not that the offer isn’t understood. Other versions of it have been heard before, and the probability it fails to hold is being priced in.
Skepticism in Venezuela also comes pre-supplied with vocabulary. Almost three decades of State rhetoric have framed foreign extractive capital as imperial extraction (saqueo, entrega). People do not have to believe the framing to use it. Many will reach for it because it is the only available vocabulary for criticizing a returning company. The corporate language that lands well in a boardroom across an ocean arrives into a discursive space that has been filled for a generation.
None of which prepares an operator for the deepest mismatch. Where the State has withdrawn from basic services, foreign companies will not be received as purely economic actors. They will be received as potential substitutes for the State and expected to provide what the hospital, the school, the utility, and the municipality no longer do. A company arriving to play a bounded role (taxes, permits, a defined social investment envelope) may find the limits it has drawn around itself are not recognized on the other side of the gate. Conflict may rise not because the company has done something wrong, but because the role it is willing to play is smaller than the role it is being asked to fill. And past experience tells people that the only leverage they have, when promises don’t hold, is disruption.
In their 1984 book El caso Venezuela: una ilusión de armonía, Moisés Naím and Ramón Piñango argued that Venezuela had lived for decades in an unsustainable harmony, oil revenue papering over political frustrations. Today there is no harmony and there is no illusion. The arbiters are weaker than they have ever been. The redistributive cushion is gone.
In a 2024 retrospective, Naím and Piñango named a specific mode of failure: the neglect of what they called, in a deliberate understatement, la carpintería, the carpentry. The unglamorous work of implementation, where plans either succeed or quietly fall apart. Small, dismissed flaws in execution had repeatedly proved fatal. When everything was a priority, nothing was.
This is where the current opening risks repeating the failure, transposed from public policy to private investment. A former senior executive at a major international oil company recently told me that the industry’s preference for offshore projects in Venezuela is shaped to a meaningful extent by a desire to avoid the social dynamics on land, not only by reservoir quality. Sanctions, fiscal terms, and reservoirs can be modeled from afar. The social landscape of a specific Zulia oilfield town or a Bolívar Indigenous territory cannot, and the speed of the opening is pulling capital past the groundwork that determines whether a project actually runs.
The contracts will be signed in Caracas and approved in Houston or London. They will fail or hold somewhere else: at the gate of a refinery in Anzoátegui and on the road into a mining town, in front of a hospital that hasn’t run a power generator in a year. The plans are moving faster than the country they describe. That is the carpentry. That is where the projects will come apart: not on the page, but among neighbors more changed, more skeptical, and more demanding than the plan assumed.
Article content
LONDON — Paymentology, the leading global issuer-processor, today announced a $175 million investment co-led by Apis Partners (”Apis”), a private equity firm specialising in financial infrastructure and services, and Aspirity Partners (“Aspirity”), a pan-European Private Equity firm focused on Financial Technology & Services and Enterprise Technology & Connectivity Services.
THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
or
Article content
The investment will support Paymentology’s continued global expansion, product development and strengthening of its team, as the company builds on strong demand for modern issuer processing on a global scale.
Article content
Article content
Article content
The transaction brings together two investors with deep experience in the payments industry and a shared focus on advancing payments infrastructure, united by the view that issuer processing represents one of the most significant opportunities in the sector. For Apis, the investment, made by Apis Growth Fund III1, marks the firm’s 16th payments investment. Both Apis and Aspirity will draw on their deep sector and global network of payments experts to support the next phase of Paymentology’s growth.
Article content
Top Stories
Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.
By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don’t see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.
We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again
Article content
Joe O’Mara, Founder and Managing Partner at Aspirity Partners commented:
Article content
“Payments is a core pillar of our investment strategy, and Paymentology represents the kind of category-leading platform we look to back: modern technology, global relevance and strong exposure to long-term growth in digital payments. As Aspirity’s first investment from our inaugural fund, this partnership reflects our sector-specialist approach and was the downstream outcome of our proactive thematic origination model, including the valuable contribution of our Innovator & Leader network. We have been particularly impressed by the execution and ambition shown by Jeff and the team, and look forward to supporting the company through its next phase of international growth.”
Article content
Matteo Stefanel, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Apis commented:
Article content
“We are thrilled to partner with Paymentology – a company that operates at the centre of an attractive and fast
Article content
Article content
growing segment in the global payments ecosystem – and build on our decade plus relationship with the executive team. Leveraging our global connectivity and sector expertise across the payments value chain, we look forward to supporting management as they continue to scale, extend their capabilities and deliver meaningful, lasting impact by improving access to modern financial services worldwide.”
Article content
Despite the global payments market being estimated at $49 trillion by 2026, much of the issuing layer remains constrained by legacy infrastructure, limiting innovation, speed and the quality of end-user payment experiences. Paymentology is addressing this gap through its highly configurable, cloud-native platform, enabling real-time processing at scale for clients across 68 countries and giving issuers the flexibility to launch, adapt and manage card and digital payment experiences more efficiently across markets.
Article content
Article content
Jeff Parker, CEO at Paymentology, commented:
Article content
Article content
The future of finance is already here, but legacy infrastructure continues to hold back innovation. At Paymentology, we see a significant opportunity to remove that friction and enable our clients to move at the pace the market demands. We’ve built an issuing platform designed for growth, helping digital banks, fintechs and financial institutions launch, scale and expand their card programmes with confidence. By combining global capability with the flexibility to adapt locally, we enable our clients to compete more effectively with speed, control and efficiency, in an increasingly dynamic landscape.
Article content
This investment and the strength of our partnership with Apis and Aspirity is a strong endorsement of our platform and strategy. It positions us to accelerate our growth, expand our capabilities, and continue supporting our clients as they build momentum, and unlock truly unstoppable progress.
Article content
Article content
This momentum is reflected in Paymentology’s performance, with new sales rising 117% year-on-year in FY25 and transaction volumes increasing 65%. Growth has been driven by strong demand from digital banks, embedded finance providers, digital asset-linked card programmes and expense management platforms, alongside established banks modernising legacy systems. The business also benefits from a highly diversified international client base and significant exposure to high‑growth regions including the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and APAC.
Article content
Paymentology’s strong customer relationships, ability to operate across diverse regulatory environments and continuity of management further strengthen its position as a trusted global infrastructure partner. The company will use the capital to support the growth and innovation ambitions of its current and future clients, while expanding beyond core issuer processing into adjacent areas including credit, stablecoin, tokenisation and AI-driven services. Paymentology supports clients in close to 70 countries, including leading FinTechs (for example: M-Pesa by Safaricom, RedotPay, Rain, TrueMoney, ARQ, and many others), and some of the world’s fastest growing neobanks (such as GoTyme, Snappi, Wio Bank, D360, Albo, among others).
Article content
Udayan Goyal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Apis added:
Article content
“As the 16th investment Apis has made in the global payments sector, this deal reinforces our strong conviction in the opportunity within issuer processing. This partnership represents a shared vision to accelerate the democratisation of card issuance, broaden access to digital financial infrastructure and expand into new geographies and adjacent capabilities. This further exemplifies our approach of backing proven mission-critical infrastructure providers, capital‑light business models that generate attractive returns while driving measurable positive impact demonstrating that long‑term value creation and impact go hand in hand.”
Legal defeats at home leave the White House with dwindling leverage as trade talks begin in Beijing.
President Donald Trump heads into this week’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping with a major embarrassment back home: the legal foundation of his aggressive tariff strategy is rapidly eroding.
Trump expects to meet Xi in Beijing from May 14 to May 15 to discuss trade, the war in Iran and, possibly, Taiwan. But the meeting comes as federal courts rule against Trump’s sweeping tariff measures, including the 10% global duties and triple-digit levies on Chinese goods that the White House once promoted as a key source of leverage over Beijing.
The rulings, the most recent of which was on May 7, weaken one of Trump’s most aggressive economic weapons just as Washington, D.C., tries to navigate an increasingly fragile geopolitical landscape.
Trump has refused to concede defeat. In March, he defended the tariffs on his social platform, Truth Social. He argued that Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 “fully allowed” and “legally tested” the levies. Trump is the first president to invoke Section 122.
Now, his administration is looking to Section 301 of U.S. trade law as a potential path to impose tariffs with fewer legal vulnerabilities.
Section 301 is a provision of the Trade Act of 1974 that empowers the U.S. president to impose tariffs or other penalties on countries accused of unfair trade practices.
But analysts warn that the strategy may also face significant legal and procedural obstacles — worse than Section 122.
“Section 301 tariffs involve a more cumbersome investigatory process before they can be imposed. That is why Trump has preferred other statutes such as [The International Emergency Economic Powers Act] and Section 122, which he attempted to implement by simple executive order,” said Phillip Magness, senior fellow at the Independent Institute.
With Section 122 of IEEPA, the Trump administration sought to revive a long-dormant statutory provision and reinterpret Congress’s definition of “balance of payments” to justify using it against modern trade deficits. If Trump pivots to Section 301 as his next option, his powers are more restricted and must meet more onerous regulatory requirements.
Magness expects this will potentially trigger another wave of lawsuits.
“Trump will attempt to stretch the language of Section 301 as well, in which case there will probably be court challenges to some of his weaker Section 301 findings,” Magness said.
Since April of last year, hundreds of companies have challenged the tariffs in court, including Costco Wholesale Corp., Prada SpA, Staples Inc. and Bumble Bee Foods, along with foreign firms such as BYD Co., Kawasaki Motors and Yokohama Rubber Co.
The summit also unfolds against a dramatically altered geopolitical backdrop from the leaders’ last meeting in South Korea in October, when both sides agreed to temporarily pause an escalating trade war after China threatened restrictions on rare earth exports.
Since then, Trump has become increasingly consumed by the conflict with Iran — one of China’s closest Middle Eastern allies — a war that has contributed to a global energy crunch and redirected U.S. military resources away from Asia.
The conflict has also strained U.S. munitions stockpiles, fueling speculation among some Chinese analysts about Washington’s ability to defend Taiwan in a prolonged regional confrontation, according to reports from The New York Times.
MattGush
Earnings Call Insights: LENZ Therapeutics (LENZ) Q1 2026
“In Q1, our performance was consistent with the expectations we outlined on our last call.” (President, CEO, Secretary & Director Evert Schimmelpennink) “We delivered approximately 25,000 paid and filled prescriptions… and generated $1.9 million in net revenue, including $1.7 million in
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
Financial sector jobs grew in April, but a record wage gap challenges the industry’s recovery.
There might be a light at the end of the tunnel for job safety in commercial banking — or it could be the light of an oncoming train.
After more than 12 months of continuous job losses, commercial banks may be turning the corner. The ADP National Employment report for April 2026 noted that the financial activities sector grew by 9,000 positions, 5,000 more than the previous month.
The sector added the fourth-most jobs, behind education and health services (61,000); trade, transportation, and utilities (25,000); and construction (10,000). Only professional and business services saw a decline, with 8,000 jobs lost in April.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is both more bullish and bearish compared to the ADP findings. The BLS calculated that the economy added 115,000 non-farm payroll jobs in April, while ADP saw private sector employment increase by 109,000 jobs, based on the anonymized weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees.
On the other hand, BLS noted that employment in financial activities “showed little change over the month.”
The slight upswing seen by ADP could be a reversal of monthly job losses in commercial banking from February 2025, according to research by KBRA Financial Intelligence (KFI). But there’s a catch.
“Recent declines have been markedly narrower than those recorded in 2023 and 2024, suggesting that a consolidation of the commercial banking workforce could be slowing, but the ongoing implementation of AI within the industry could continue to shrink headcount at some banks,” according to a KFI Insight report.
So, where’s the greatest job growth? At the smallest and largest organizations.
The micro/small (1-19 employees) and large enterprises (more than 500 employees) led in job growth, with 43,000 and 42,000 positions, respectively. Only companies at the upper end of the mid-sized enterprise range (250-499 employees) cut, jettisoning 3,000 jobs in April.
“Small and large employers are hiring, but we’re seeing softness in the middle,” said Dr. Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. “Large companies have resources to deploy, and small ones are the most nimble, both important advantages in a complex labor environment.”
It’s not all good news. According to Bank of America Institute, which bases its numbers on aggregated and anonymized bank transaction data, unemployment payments continued to slow, but a large K-shape in wage growth continued into April.
“In April, higher-income households saw their after-tax wage growth rise to 6.0% year-on-year (YoY) — the highest rate we’ve observed since August 2021,” wrote the authors of the April 2026 Employment Report from the Institute.
“In fact, even within this cohort, there is a divergence, with after-tax wage growth for the highest 5% of households by income stronger than that of the rest of the higher-income cohort,” the authors noted.
“Middle- and lower-income households also saw increases in their after-tax wage growth in April, to 2.3% YoY and 1.5% YoY, respectively,” the researchers found. “But the gap between these cohorts and higher-income households remains at its widest level since our data series began in 2015.”
Olga Kostrova /iStock via Getty Images
CNH Industrial (CNH) down 0.4% in Monday’s trading as Goldman Sachs downgraded shares to Neutral from Buy with a $10.50 price target, dropped from $12, saying the seller of agricultural machinery and construction equipment is fairly valued after a period of strong
RudyBalasko/iStock via Getty Images
Las Vegas Sands (LVS) has picked up the pace of hiring around the Dallas region. The company has newly posted new job openings that include architects, data engineers, and technical support specialists. Notably, one listing highlights the design and implementation of a casino management
Earnings Snapshot: Cronos Group beats Q1 top-line and bottom-line estimates
Source link
Tighter financial conditions and currencies relatively firmer against the dollar defined the Latin American macroeconomic backdrop.
Household cash flows proved mostly resilient across the region, supported by solid labor markets. On the other hand, corporate activity became more cautious, shaped by higher funding costs and a more uncertain global environment.
In the banking sector, selectivity was the year’s defining theme, as global banks largely maintained their multiyear retrenchment from noncore markets while regional players focused more on consolidating scale where it could be translated into tangible returns. As a result, growth became more targeted, with institutions prioritizing efficiency by focusing on the core geographies and segments where they held clear competitive advantages.
Fintech further consolidated its role as a foundational layer of the region’s financial system, prompting banks to deepen partnerships and use digital platforms to close product gaps, accelerate distribution, and oftentimes expand inorganically.
The result was a banking model that became more focused, increasingly defined by the ability to operate effectively within tighter strategic boundaries.
Caribbean economies entered 2025 supported by resilient tourism flows and solid remittance activity. Even so, growth across the region remained moderate, constrained by global uncertainty, tight public finances, and a still-cautious policy environment.
Against this backdrop, the region’s banks focused on strengthening core operations. Investment in digital infrastructure continued alongside efforts to streamline onboarding, reduce friction, and broaden access. Growth was still underpinned by an expanding customer base; but institutions pursued growth more selectively, placing greater emphasis on credit quality and risk-adjusted returns.
In Central America, banks relied on strengthening their funding bases, aiming to take advantage of the resilience of household cash flows across the region. While client and portfolio expansion was mostly moderate, a pickup in remittances during the first half of the year helped support overall profitability. Credit growth remained relatively strong even as corporate lending slightly moderated.
This translated into a year defined by efficiency for the industry, as institutions kept pushing digital adoption and electronic transactions higher and focused more closely on asset quality and operating discipline.
Itau Unibanco
Our Best Bank in Latin America, Itaú Unibanco, stood out for translating those conditions into superior profitability without sacrificing balance-sheet quality.
Even in a more selective credit environment, the Brazilian giant’s recurring net income rose 13.1% year over year (YoY) to 46.8 billion Brazilian reais ($8.5 billion). Return on equity (ROE) reached 23.4%, among the strongest in the region. Deposits grew 9.3% to 1.7 trillion reais, and loans expanded 6% to nearly 1.5 trillion reais, reflecting continued commercial momentum even as credit conditions became more selective.
Digital execution remained another differentiator for the bank. Through the continued rollout of its One Itaú super app, the bank reached a solid benchmark in digital channels: 97% of interactions with individual clients and 98% with corporate customers, helping to improve the consolidated efficiency ratio to 38.8%.
Scotiabank
Across the Caribbean, Scotiabank maintained strong capital positions and disciplined cost management while investing in digital capabilities and client experience, which improved profitability, digital adoption, and credit quality underpinning performance.
Davivienda
By combining scale expansion with disciplined execution and continued digital investments, Davivienda consolidated its position as one of the region’s leading institutions, in terms of reach and breadth of offerings in 2025.
Building on the integration of Scotiabank’s operations in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama, completed in December 2025, the bank ended the year with an expanded footprint. Total assets reached $64.3 billion, while its customer base exceeded 27 million across six countries.
Banco Galicia
In Argentina, Banco Galicia excelled by betting on network expansion and service growth during a year defined by a gradual normalization of financial conditions and dwindling inflation. While the country’s broader economy expanded 4.6% in 2025 after contracting in 2024, the recovery was arguably uneven and sector focused, as household consumption contracted amid a more challenging labor market.
Against this evolving backdrop, the bank focused on integrating recently acquired HSBC Argentina’s franchise and on continuing to expand its best-in-country service network to capture renewed banking activity. By mid-2025, total assets had risen to 30.2 trillion Argentine pesos ($25.4 billion), up 33% from a year earlier. Meanwhile, the loan portfolio reached 14.4 trillion pesos, an increase of roughly 95% YoY.
On the digital front, Galicia continued to expand the reach of its ecosystem through Naranja X, which by mid-2025 had grown to 9.8 million credit cards and 7.9 million deposit accounts, with 81% of clients using digital channels. The group also joined Argentina’s first real-time interbank fraud-intelligence network, reflecting the increasing scale and sophistication of digital banking activity across the system.
Scotiabank Bahamas
Scotiabank Bahamas reached record profitability with a pretax income of $78.3 million in 2025—the highest in 16 years. The bank also reinforced its lead in digital banking, with virtually all transactions now executed through electronic channels, supporting cost optimization and improved client experience.
Scotiabank Barbados
Scotiabank Barbados’ net profits rose to 87.4 million Barbadian dollars ($43.7 million) while return on equity reached 23%, reflecting improved efficiency and cost control.
Belize Bank
With a market share of over 40%, Belize Bank benefited from continued expansion of the domestic banking system in 2025. Its total assets reached record levels, to post significant improvements in presence and product offering.
Butterfield Bank
In Bermuda, Butterfield Bank delivered stable performance, supported by a strong balance sheet with total assets of $14.1 billion in 2025.
Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz
Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz continued to consolidate its position as Bolivia’s leading private-sector bank in 2025, extending its leadership in both lending and deposits while maintaining solid profitability growth. Total assets reached almost $6.6 billion, up 4.4% YoY. Deposits rose to nearly $5.2 billion. Net profit totaled $60.2 million, with ROE of 16.3%, one of the best in its category.
BTG Pactual
BTG Pactual continued to place margins and client growth at the forefront of its operation in the region’s largest market, Brazil. The bank focused on its capital-light, platform-driven model to expand client activity across wealth, investment banking, and digital distribution.
As a result, the bank posted record numbers across the board. Adjusted return on average equity reached 26.9%, total revenue rose to 33 billion reais, and market capitalization climbed to 205 billion reais, underscoring investor confidence in one of the region’s most consistently high-performing financial institutions. BTG ended the year with 2.5 trillion reais in assets under custody and management.
Eying the region’s growing sustainability transition, BTG also partnered with the International Finance Corporation to mobilize up to $1 billion in sustainability and development financing across Latin America through 2028.
Butterfield Bank
In the Cayman Islands, Butterfield Bank focused on strengthening client experience and accessibility. In 2025, the bank upgraded its online and mobile platforms for retail and corporate clients. It also launched initiatives such as an enhanced Young Savers account and financial education partnerships.
Banco de Chile
Banco de Chile delivered another year of consistent outperformance in an economy marked by lower inflation, falling interest rates, and still-muted real credit growth, all of which reduced the sector’s earnings tailwinds.
In the face of this challenging environment, Banco de Chile continued to strengthen its position through efficiency gains and digital expansion, including a 24.5% growth in the bank’s FAN digital accounts as well as the launch of Banchile Pagos, a move that helped deepen the bank’s leadership in both scale and customer experience in the country.
Banco de Bogotá
In Colombia, Banco de Bogotá operated in a still-restrictive environment, with inflation at 5.1%, policy rates at over 9.2%, and a stronger Colombian peso (up by more than 17% to the US dollar), all of which continued to weigh on margins and credit demand. Against that backdrop, the bank delivered steady balance-sheet growth: Total assets rose 6% to 155.8 trillion pesos ($41.4 billion); loans were up 4.8% to 109.4 trillion pesos; and deposits increased 7.7%. Asset quality improved, with nonperforming loans declining to 3.6%.
The bank also continued to accelerate its digital-expansion plan, processing 1.6 billion transactions in 2025—a massive 59% YoY increase—positioning Banco de Bogotá at the forefront of one of the world’s most digitally integrated banking systems.
BAC Credomatic
In Costa Rica, BAC Credomatic delivered a solid performance in 2025, supported by sustained consumer-lending demand and strong activity in the bank’s payments and card businesses. BAC maintained a diverse revenue base, balancing lending growth with fee-based income from transactional services.
During the year, BAC advanced its strategic focus on small and midsize enterprises and sustainable financing. It continued to expand digital channels and payments across its Costa Rican franchise. As a result, for the first nine months of 2025, BAC International Bank reported net income of $586 million, up from $538 million a year earlier.
Banreservas
The Dominican Republic’s largest financial institution, Banreservas, continued to expand its role in key segments, capturing over 60% of remittance flows within the financial system in 2025. During the year, it completed implementing the Finastra Essence core banking platform, which improved processing efficiency and enabled real-time, digital-first services.
Produbanco
In Ecuador, Produbanco benefited from a more supportive macro backdrop in 2025, as bank profits in the country jumped a massive 43% YoY from a difficult 2024. In that environment, the bank continued to grow above the market: Net income for 2025 reached $85.2 million, roughly double from the year prior; and the loan portfolio was up 13.7% YoY by September 2025, supported by stronger commercial activity and improving credit dynamics. Profitability also strengthened.
At the same time, the bank continued to deepen its strategic positioning through sustainable and digital finance. Produbanco’s sustainable portfolio surpassed $1 billion, including $373 million in green financing, up 80% from 2023.
Banco Cuscatlán
A focus on digital expansion and credit resilience was the secret behind Banco Cuscatlán’s above-average performance in El Salvador. The bank outperformed the competition, with total assets increasing 13.5% YoY to over $4.8 billion.
Last year, Banco Cuscatlán continued to advance its digital and operational capabilities, including the expansion of its YA ecosystem and fully digital lending offerings. The bank also strengthened its regional footprint by migrating a $41.8 million mortgage portfolio.
Banco Industrial
Banco Industrial continued to benefit from structural growth opportunities in Guatemala, leveraging the bank’s market-leading position to further growth. As a result, the bank’s total assets reached 184.7 billion Guatemalan quetzales ($24.1 billion), up 14.8% YoY. Growth was supported by a combination of corporate lending strength and expanding retail reach, alongside continued investment in digital infrastructure.
Scotiabank Guyana
Rapid economic expansion continued to shape results at Scotiabank Guyana, where assets grew 37% in 2025, driven by rising deposits linked to the country’s oil and gas sector.
Banco Ficohsa
As Honduran banking assets expanded by 7.8% YoY in 2025, Banco Ficohsa found itself well positioned to capitalize on its nearly 19% market share in assets and 18% in loans, translating systemwide growth into continued balance-sheet expansion and lending activity.
National Commercial Bank Jamaica
National Commercial Bank Jamaica delivered a strong rebound in 2025. Net profit more than doubled to 13.2 billion Jamaican dollars ($82.9 million), supported by a 19% increase in total operating income.
Banorte
In the region’s second-largest economy, Mexico, Banorte was well positioned to take advantage of a more resilient domestic macro backdrop in 2025, leveraging rebounding household demand and easing macroeconomic pressures to deliver another year of strong, broad-based performance. Net income rose to 58.8 billion Mexican pesos ($3.3 billion), while ROE reached 22.8%, and the cost-to-income ratio remained low at 35.8%, reflecting continued strength in both profitability and operating discipline.
That performance was reinforced by the bank’s growing breadth in commercial and strategic execution. Consumer lending expanded 12% YoY by mid-2025, supported by particularly strong growth in auto loans (30%), credit cards (18%), payroll lending (9%), and mortgages (8%).
Banorte also deepened its reach through the addition of retail giant Oxxo to its correspondent network. The bank also expanded its digital capabilities through a renewed partnership with Google Cloud, aimed at scaling AI, analytics, and personalization across the franchise.
Banco LAFISE Bancentro
During 2025, Banco LAFISE Bancentro in Nicaragua reached record profitability and a highly resilient balance sheet. Net income rose 24% YoY to $69.4 million, accounting for 31.1% of total system profits. Return on equity (RoE) increased to 17.2%, making LAFISE the only major bank in the country to improve profitability during the year.
Banco General
In Panama, Banco General continued to act as the banking system’s anchor institution in 2025, leveraging the bank’s scale and deeply embedded client base to sustain growth. The bank retained its leading position with a 26.9% share of deposits and 18.1% of loans, reflecting its central role in channeling liquidity and credit across the economy.
Net income rose 5.7% YoY to $829.3 million. RoE remained strong at 24.1% and the efficiency ratio low at 28.3%, supported by steady activity across core segments.
Banco Continental
Amid another year of solid economic growth in Paraguay, Banco Continental continued to leverage its scale to deliver standout profitability. Total assets reached approximately $5.5 billion, up nearly 10% YoY, supported by a loan portfolio of nearly $4.1 billion and deposits of nearly $3.4 billion. Just as important, asset quality remained exceptionally strong, with nonperforming loans below 1%, reinforcing the bank’s ability to grow without compromising underwriting discipline.
Banco de Crédito del Perú
Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP) benefited from one of the more supportive banking environments in the region in 2025, as economic growth recovered, inflation stayed near target, and easing rates helped revive financial activity. BCP continued to anchor its parent Credicorp’s universal banking performance, helping drive group net income to over 6.9 billion Peruvian soles ($2.1 billion) and ROE to 18.6%, while preserving the bank’s leadership in Peru’s loans and deposits markets.
Banco Popular de Puerto Rico
Banco Popular de Puerto Rico delivered a strong performance in 2025. Net income rose 36% year-on-year (YoY) to $833 million, supported by solid revenue growth and stable credit quality. Total assets reached approximately $75 billion, with deposits of $66.2 billion and loan balances around $39 billion.
Republic Bank
With total assets reaching approximately 127 billion Trinidadian dollars ($18.7 billion) in 2025, Republic Bank continued to strengthen its position in Trinidad and Tobago, supported by steady balance sheet growth of over 6% YoY.
Scotiabank Turks & Caicos
For Scotiabank Turks & Caicos, the focus was on steady growth and client accessibility. Total assets increased by 5.2% to $708 million in 2025.
Banco Itaú Uruguay
Banco Itaú Uruguay also takes our Best Bank award, in its country, for posting significant growth without sacrificing capital efficiency. At the end of 2024, the bank expanded its digital-payments capabilities through the acquisition of local fintech Plexo while continuing to build on the scale of the bank’s card and consumer-finance franchise.
FirstBank
FirstBankmaintained stable credit performance and low levels of nonperforming assets to post consistent growth in the US Virgin Islands. During the year, the bank advanced its digital transformation through continued migration to cloud-based infrastructure.
Mercantil Banco Universal
In its centennial year, Mercantil Banco Universal outperformed by remaining one of Venezuela’s fastest-growing banks. It added more than 62,000 new customers and installed over 10,000 new card-payment terminals. The historic institution also continued to invest heavily in technology, migrating 650,000 debit cards to contactless technology and more than doubling YoY usage of its MIA (Mercantil Inteligencia Artificial) AI assistant to more than 1.5 million users.
Orix GAAP EPS of ¥399.40, revenue of ¥3330.83B; gives FY27 outlook
Source link
Published on •Updated
Oil prices surged in early trade as investors digested the latest developments in the Middle East, with both Brent and US crude climbing over 4%.
It comes after Trump’s rejection of Tehran’s response to the latest US proposition on bringing the conflict in Iran, and subsequent impact on trade passing through the Strait of Hormuz, to an end.
In other trading, US futures edged lower, while Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.4% to 62,486.84 after briefly reaching another record high in intraday trading at above 63,300.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 4.1% to 7,804.71. It also hit an all-time intraday high, led by gains from tech-related stocks including Samsung Electronics and memory chip maker SK Hynix.
Technology-related stocks and growing artificial intelligence-related interest have supported markets in Japan and South Korea despite the Iran war, with the Nikkei 225 and Kospi rising more than 10% and 30%, respectively, over the past month.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump will head to China this week for talks with his counterpart, Xi Jinping. The two leaders are expected to discuss a wide range of topics, including trade concerns.
Chinese AI firms dominate Hong Kong IPOs with $22 billion in exits, while US tech listings lag amid investor skepticism.
China’s artificial intelligence companies are driving a sharp divergence in global IPO markets, dominating first-quarter listings in Hong Kong and outpacing U.S. tech peers as investor sentiment fractures across regions.
Consider the trend: Chinese AI firms listed in Hong Kong accounted for four of the largest public listings in the first quarter. According to new data from PitchBook, these companies — Z.ai, MiniMax, Biren Technology and Iluvatar CoreX Semiconductor — collectively helped drive more than $22 billion in AI-related exit value during the quarter.
Adding Edge Medical, a surgical robotics company, brings the total for all five Chinese listings to over $24 billion.
The performance stands in sharp contrast to the muted reception many U.S. technology IPOs have faced. Investors have grown increasingly skeptical of richly valued software companies amid concerns that AI could disrupt traditional software business models.
“It’s genuinely a confluence of factors rather than any single driver,” Harrison Rolfes, senior research analyst at PitchBook, told Global Finance. “The DeepSeek moment in early 2025 fundamentally shifted investor perception of Chinese AI capability, and that rerating carried momentum into these listings.”
Rolfes said geopolitical considerations also played a major role, creating what he described as a “national champion premium” among investors in Hong Kong and broader Asian markets.
“Structurally, these companies came to market at more digestible valuations relative to their growth profiles compared to U.S. tech IPOs, which have repeatedly disappointed at high entry multiples,” he said.
Investor enthusiasm surrounding Chinese AI firms has emerged as U.S. IPO performance deteriorates.
According to PitchBook data, the median U.S. IPO has underperformed its benchmark by 42 percentage points within 120 days of listing over the trailing 12 months.
“That’s historically the worst stretch in our dataset,” Rolfes said.
PitchBook noted that 2025 already represented a record low, with median IPOs trailing benchmarks by 35.6 percentage points after 120 days. Early 2026 listings are performing even worse, according to the report.
The closest comparison, Rolfes said, was the post-boom correction in 2021, when median U.S. IPOs lagged their benchmarks by 32 percentage points following aggressive pricing during the .
Globally, the median venture capital-backed IPO has underperformed the Morningstar U.S. Market Broad Growth Extended Index—a broad U.S. equity benchmark—by nearly seven percentage points over the past year. In the U.S., the index as a growth-stock yardstick shows that the gap widens sharply to 42 percentage points within 120 days of listing.
Roughly 66% of companies that have gone public since the start of 2025 are currently trading below their IPO prices, PitchBook found.
“The deterioration is progressive, suggesting that initial pricing optimism is giving way to fundamental reassessment as lockup expirations approach and more information reaches the market,” according to the May 5 report.
The divergence in performance has been particularly stark among high-profile tech listings.
CoreWeave, based in Livingston, New Jersey, saw its shares nearly triple since its debut as investor demand for AI computing infrastructure accelerated. But many other venture-backed listings have struggled—badly.
Among the U.S.-listed laggards are shares of eToro, down 45.2%; Netskope, down 61%; Klarna, down 67.1%; Figma, down 85.7%; and Gemini Space Station, down 86.3%.
PitchBook said broader public SaaS markets have also weakened as investors increasingly treat AI as a threat to incumbent software firms rather than a growth catalyst.
“Public markets appear to be treating AI not as a tailwind for existing software but as a displacement risk, which many are calling a ‘SaaSpocalypse,’ in which incumbents are repriced downward even as private AI unicorns command record valuations,” according to the report.
For investors, the divergence raises questions about whether U.S.-listed AI companies still offer the best risk-adjusted exposure to the global AI boom.
“The companies leading Hong Kong’s surge — semiconductor designers, applied AI platforms and robotics-adjacent businesses — are generating real revenue with defensible vertical positioning, and they have outperformed their U.S. counterparts by a wide margin,” Rolfes said.
Expect investors to take a closer look at how heavily their portfolios are tilted toward specific geographies, considering AI-related valuation premiums are persisting longer in Hong Kong than in New York.
Rolfes also cautioned that some of the highest-valued Chinese AI names could eventually face corrections. Still, the underlying businesses are stronger than many Western investors have assumed, he argued.
“The broader takeaway,” he said, “is that Chinese AI has likely graduated from a risk to monitor to a market to understand.”
ESAB raises dividend by 20% to $0.12 dividend
Source link
SlavkoSereda/iStock via Getty Images
Crude oil futures gained Sunday after President Trump rejected Iran’s latest response to his proposal to end the Middle East as “totally unacceptable,” while the Strait of Hormuz remains mostly closed.
Iran’s proposal reportedly emphasizes Iranian sovereignty over the strait while calling
Top global stories this week: Shell, Toyota, HSBC among notable names
Source link
Archer Aviation Q1 preview: focus on FAA progress, production
Source link
The article suggests that hyperscaler capital expenditures are likely to be maintained even during economic downturns due to competitive pressures and the risk of under-investment, but acknowledges their financial cushion is thinner than historic monopolies like Bell System.
