Welcome to the third edition of THE TREASURY HUB Banking and Treasury Markets Bulletin of 2021. It is 12 months since the first lockdown and the seismic impact on all of our lives. The changes required in the way we work have accelerated trends that had been emerging, but not all of it is negative. In fact, it could be a catalyst for a lot of positive developments. Of course, the impact has been very uneven – the hospitality/hotel sectors have been decimated while other sectors have thrived.

On the currency front, USD has regained some of the losses that it incurred over the course of 2020 and into 2021. EUR/GBP has also strengthened due to the avoidance of a hard Brexit but both USD and GBP are gaining against EUR due to weakness of the Euro which is primarily (directly and indirectly) linked to relative success of vaccine rollout programmes (slow in Europe, much faster in UK and US).

From an investment perspective, stock market trends are generally positive although NASDAQ has retreated in recent weeks.

Interest rates are climbing off the bottom and we review them in more detail this month. US trends are particularly strong.

Finally, section 5 covers the banking market and analyses the recent results of AIB and Bank of Ireland as well as emerging trends in that sector.

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

The Treasury Hub - Banking and Treasury Report March 2021 can be downloaded here.

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