NatWest Group has taken the role of founding banking partner and secretariat for the Northern 500, a new programme that will link 80 to 100 of the North of England's mid-market businesses with mayors, government and investors, with a formal launch set for January 2027. The move puts the bank at the organising centre of a growth community aimed at the segment of the economy it has spent the past two years positioning itself around. The Northern 500 is led by The Great North, t

The European Union’s banks have grown their combined balance sheet to nearly €35 trillion while nudging profitability higher and holding asset quality broadly steady, according to consolidated banking data published by the European Central Bank on 6 November 2026. Total assets of EU-headquartered credit institutions reached €34.99trn at the end of June 2026, a 5.18% rise on the €33.27trn recorded a year earlier, confirming a sector that keeps expanding even as the interest ra

As of this week, the WEF's 2026 Cybersecurity Outlook has put a $1.1 trillion price tag on fraud, and the headlines are catching up. From a US Bank ransomware incident to Marquis Software's 670,000-customer breach, financial cybersecurity has entered a new phase. The uncomfortable truth, as of this week, is that cybersecurity in financial services has stopped being a back-office function and become a boardroom emergency. Three stories this week tell the shape of the new threa

HSBC has increased its AT1 tender offer to up to $1.5bn, lifting the cap from $1bn just one day after launching the buyback, as the lender moves to retire a $3bn series of loss-absorbing bonds ahead of their first call date in May 2027. The upsized offer, announced on 6 November 2026, covers the bank's 6.000% perpetual subordinated contingent convertible securities and is tied directly to a new bond sale priced the same week. The structure is a textbook liability management e

The week finance stopped talking about AI, quantum and tokenisation as the future and started treating them as line items. BlackRock files to back stablecoins with tokenised money market funds, Citi scales AI agents to 180,000 employees, Ripple pushes XRPL into institutional DeFi, and JPMorgan plants a flag in quantum. For three years the financial industry has been running proofs-of-concept in agentic AI, quantum computing, and on-chain finance. As of this week, the proofs a

BitPay has switched on one-tap crypto buying for users in more than 100 countries, adding Apple Pay, Google Pay, card and SEPA payments to a checkout that now completes a purchase in a single confirmation. The feature, live on iOS and Android and powered by MoonPay, widens a US-only Apple Pay flow that BitPay turned on in June 2026, opening the door to European buyers through SEPA for the first time. The update, announced on 5 November 2026, lands the familiar rhythm of mobil