The post-trading infrastructure of OTC derivatives markets has not always kept up with the rapid growth in trading volumes. Recent years have seen some initiatives that seek to introduce multilateral elements that facilitate flows of information between market participants while preserving the...

The Lehman Brothers failure stressed global interbank and foreign exchange markets because it led to a run on money market funds, the largest suppliers of dollar funding to non-US banks. Policy stopped the run and replaced private with public funding.

Trading in the FX market reached an all-time high of $5.3 trillion per day in April 2013, a 35% increase relative to 2010. Non-dealer financial institutions, including smaller banks, institutional investors and hedge funds, have grown into the largest and most active counterparty segment. The...

n-deliverable forwards (NDFs) allow investors and borrowers to take positions in currencies that are subject to official controls. Turnover in NDFs has risen in recent years as non-residents use them to hedge increasing investment in local currency bonds. Pricing in deliverable forward and NDF...

In response to the financial crisis, the authorities in a number of countries used public funds to recapitalise their banks. Did a reduction of risk in banks' lending follow these rescue operations? To help answer this question, we analyse the balance sheets and syndicated loan signings of 87...

This special feature looks at trading activity in the foreign exchange market between the Triennial Surveys conducted in 2010 and 2013 and in the months following. We estimate that the $5.3 trillion per day reported for April 2013 was a peak, with activity falling subsequently by $300 billion to...

Cross-border bank lending to emerging markets dropped sharply in the second half of 2011 as the euro area crisis intensified. Stefan Avdjiev (BIS), Zsolt Kuti (Magyar Nemzeti Bank) and Elod Takáts (BIS) use the BIS international banking statistics to identify the key drivers of this decline....

The BIS has revised its debt securities statistics to enhance their comparability across different markets. This feature by Branimir Gruic and Philip Wooldridge (BIS) sketches the main changes and the reasoning behind them. International issues have been redefined as debt securities issued...

Cross-border bank lending to emerging markets slowed sharply during the taper tantrum. The abruptness of this slowdown varied considerably across both lenders and borrowers. We use newly available data to explain the drivers of this cross-sectional variation. Although the initial tapering shock...

The turbulence in emerging market economies (EMEs) in mid-2013 has reminded policymakers and investors of the importance of actions by large asset managers for relatively small and illiquid EME asset markets. The presence of asset managers in EMEs has grown considerably, and the concentrated use...