How can governments recover faster from insolvency?
“THE PROCEDURES for resolving an international debt crisis”, wrote Alexis Rieffel, a former American Treasury official, in 1985, “resemble a three-ring circus”. In the first ring, the bankrupt country negotiates with the IMF, which must decide how much the country can repay and what belt-tightening it must endure. In the second ring, the country asks…
PNC’s takeover of BBVA’s American arm may start a trend
Nov 16th 2020IN MAY PNC, America’s seventh-largest retail bank by assets, sold a stake in BlackRock, an asset manager, for $17bn. Bill Demchak, PNC’s boss, said at the time that worries about the economy had prompted it to divest, in order to “bullet-proof” its balance-sheet. On November 16th he broke cover. PNC said it would…