Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. As a subject of study, it is related to but distinct from economics, which is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems, the discipline can be divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.
Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the firm's clients include corporations, governments, institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley ranked No. 61 in the 2023 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue and in the same year ranked #30 in Forbes Global 2000.
Islamic banking, Islamic finance, or Sharia-compliant finance is banking or financing activity that complies with Sharia and its practical application through the development of Islamic economics. Some of the modes of Islamic finance include mudarabah, wadiah (safekeeping), musharaka, murabahah (cost-plus), and ijarah (leasing).
Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that engages in providing advisory-based services on financial transactions for clients, such as institutional investors, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by underwriting or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of debt or equity securities. An investment bank may also assist companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and provide ancillary services such as market making, trading of derivatives and equity securities, FICC services or research. Most investment banks maintain prime brokerage and asset management departments in conjunction with their investment research businesses. As an industry, it is broken up into the Bulge Bracket, Middle Market, and boutique market.
The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999–2001). It repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in the market among banking companies, securities companies, and insurance companies that prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. With the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. Furthermore, it failed to give to the SEC or any other financial regulatory agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment. A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, gambles, many types of over-the-counter and derivative products, and futures contracts.
Financial services are economic services tied to finance provided by financial institutions. Financial services encompass a broad range of service sector activities, especially as concerns financial management and consumer finance.
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation is a Japanese multinational banking financial services institution owned by Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. It is headquartered in Marunouchi, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group operates in retail, corporate, and investment banking segment worldwide. It provides financial products and services to a wide range of clients, including individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises, large corporations, financial institutions and public sector entities. Since 2011, it has been included into the Financial Stability Board's list of global systemically important banks.
Financial risk management is the practice of protecting economic value in a firm by managing exposure to financial risk - principally operational risk, credit risk and market risk, with more specific variants as listed aside. As for risk management more generally, financial risk management requires identifying the sources of risk, measuring these, and crafting plans to mitigate them. See Finance § Risk management for an overview.
Prime brokerage is the generic term for a bundled package of services offered by investment banks, wealth management firms, and securities dealers to hedge funds which need the ability to borrow securities and cash in order to be able to invest on a netted basis and achieve an absolute return. The prime broker provides a centralized securities clearing facility for the hedge fund so the hedge fund's collateral requirements are netted across all deals handled by the prime broker. These two features are advantageous to their clients.
In finance, securities lending or stock lending refers to the lending of securities by one party to another.
A trading room gathers traders operating on financial markets. The trading room is also often called the front office. The terms "dealing room" and "trading floor" are also used, the latter being inspired from that of an open outcry stock exchange. As open outcry is gradually replaced by electronic trading, the trading room becomes the only remaining place that is emblematic of the financial market. It is also the likeliest place within the financial institution where the most recent technologies are implemented before being disseminated in its other businesses.
EFG Hermes Holding S.A.E. is an Egyptian financial services company present in the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia regions and specializes in securities brokerage, asset management, investment banking, private equity and research in addition to finance lease, factoring, microfinance, Financial technology, mortgage, and insurance. EFG Hermes serves a range of clients including sovereign wealth funds, endowments, corporations, financial institutions, high-net-worth clients and individual customers. EFG Hermes is listed on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) and London (LSE) stock exchanges. EFG Hermes has offices in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Pakistan, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, UK, United States and Bangladesh with over 4,500 people from 25 nationalities. They serve clients from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the United States. Currently, EFG Holding is listed as number 13 in Forbes' Top 50 Listed Companies in Egypt 2023.
Treasury management entails management of an enterprise's financial holdings, focusing on the firm's liquidity, and mitigating its financial-, operational- and reputational risk. Treasury Management's scope thus includes the firm's collections, disbursements, concentration, investment and funding activities.
Collateral has been used for hundreds of years to provide security against the possibility of payment default by the opposing party in a trade. Collateral management began in the 1980s, with Bankers Trust and Salomon Brothers taking collateral against credit exposure. There were no legal standards, and most calculations were performed manually on spreadsheets. Collateralisation of derivatives exposures became widespread in the early 1990s. Standardisation began in 1994 via the first ISDA documentation.
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
UBS Group AG is a multinational investment bank and financial services company founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains a presence in all major financial centres as the largest Swiss banking institution and the largest private bank in the world. UBS client services are known for their strict bank–client confidentiality and culture of banking secrecy. Because of the bank's large positions in the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific markets, the Financial Stability Board considers it a global systemically important bank.
Banking software is enterprise software that is used by the banking industry to provide and manage the financial products they provide. Within retail banks, banking software typically refers to core banking software and all its interfaces that allow them to connect to other modular software and to the interbank networks. Within investment banking, banking software typically refers to the electronic processing application software used to access capital markets.
Profit and Loss Sharing refers to Sharia-compliant forms of equity financing such as mudarabah and musharakah. These mechanisms comply with the religious prohibition on interest on loans that most Muslims subscribe to. Mudarabah (مضاربة) refers to "trustee finance" or passive partnership contract, while Musharakah refers to equity participation contract. Other sources include sukuk and direct equity investment as types of PLS.
Digital banking is part of the broader context for the move to online banking, where banking services are delivered over the internet. The shift from traditional to digital banking has been gradual, remains ongoing, and is constituted by differing degrees of banking service digitization. Digital banking involves high levels of process automation and web-based services and may include APIs enabling cross-institutional service composition to deliver banking products and provide transactions. It provides the ability for users to access financial data through desktop, mobile and ATM services.
