Chart of the week: better a raging optimist or a permabear than an index hugger

A new year, a new round. Every year at the beginning of January, I once again look with amazement and confusion at the equity market outlooks from the major financial institutions. And especially at the projected returns, which are invariably clustered right around the long-term average. Because one thing you can be almost certain of is that those projections will not materialize.

Try to be a well-rounded ‘Swiss Army knife,’ says young private banker

After studying politics, Jean-Paul Daragjati set his sights on finance through a hands-on master’s in wealth management at the University of Luxembourg. Now a private banker at Edmond de Rothschild, he says the secret to success is to never stop learning.

On Wall Street, one type of colleague remains ‘problematic’: the woman

EEOC interim chair Andrea Lucas has urged white men who feel discriminated against at work to file a federal complaint. “Are you a white man who has been disadvantaged at work because of your race or gender? Then you may be able to get money back,” Lucas said in a video on X. Act quickly, is the message.

Protectionist reflexes still stand in the way of Europe’s champions

The failed partnership between Italy’s Generali and France’s BPCE is more than a collapsed deal in European asset management. It exposes how challenging it remains for Europe to build financial scale once a project becomes truly cross-border, and how protectionist reflexes, legal uncertainty and unfinished integration can combine to smother a transaction.