Welcome to the first edition of THE TREASURY HUB Banking and Treasury Markets Bulletin of 2022. This bulletin takes a look back at 2021 and in Section 5 we include our annual “trends to watch”.

Key market movements in 2021 included inflation hitting highest levels seen in decades in some countries, which was fuelled by a significant increase in oil prices. In addition, interest rate hikes are now on the agenda for the first time in over a decade. Economic trends were broadly positive but funded by huge government borrowings and Central Bank stimulus. 

Despite the pandemic, labour markets are very tight across many geographies and stock markets have been driven up by the availability of cheap money. So who pays for this? And how will markets react to money supply starting to contract? In section 5 we discuss how the Irish Business Banking sector might look in 2022 and how the lack of competition may become an obstacle to businesses and consumers.

Please get in touch with our Corporate Finance team if we can be of any assistance.

The Treasury Hub - Banking and Treasury Report January 2022 can be downloaded here.

For any queries relating to this newsletter, please contact Chris Ball, Partner.