Investment Banks

U.S. banks have stepped up monitoring for potential cyberattacks as the U.S. war in Iran grinds on, while Gulf lenders face fresh questions over their preparedness for cyber activity tied to Iran-aligned hacktivists.

Dubai has cultivated an image as the safest haven for global capital in the Middle East, but Iranian strikes on the emirate are putting that image to a test.

A U.S. Justice Department release tied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation has unexpectedly pulled back the curtain on “family offices”—the private, often home-office-style investment operations used by many of the world’s wealthiest families.

The fallout of the release of the Epstein Files continued this week, with emergence of new details of the deceased sex trafficker’s finances, the launch of additional investigations into suspicious money flows and related sexual-abuse allegations, and the arrest of a former British royal.

Goldman Sachs is preparing to remove race, gender identity, sexual orientation and other diversity factors from the criteria its governance committee uses to identify potential candidates for its board.

Two Wall Street firms continued to manage a trust held on behalf of Suleiman Kerimov even after the Russian oligarch was blacklisted under U.S. sanctions in 2018, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Goldman Sachs has been working with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic for the past six months to co-develop autonomous “AI agents” intended to automate trade and transaction accounting and client vetting and onboarding.

African elites and companies are increasingly routing money through Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong as traditional offshore centers such as Switzerland tighten scrutiny, according to a new University of Oxford working paper reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. 

European banks could cut more than 200,000 jobs over the next five years as lenders accelerate adoption of artificial intelligence and continue closing branches, according to estimates cited by the Financial Times.

Malaysia’s High Court sentenced ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak to 15 years in prison after convicting him on 25 charges of money laundering and abuse of power linked to the looting of the 1MDB sovereign-wealth fund, The Wall Street Journal reported.