With fifty trillion in worldwide assets, the growth of mutual funds is a truly global phenomenon and deserves a broad international analysis. Local political economies and legal regimes create different regulatory preferences for the oversight of these funds, and academics, public officials and legal practitioners wishing to understand the global investing environment will require a keen awareness of these international differences. The contributors, leading scholars in the field of investment law from around the world, provide a current legal analysis of funds from a variety of perspectives and using an array of methodologies that consider the large fundamental questions governing the role and regulation of investment funds. This volume also explores the identity and behavior of investors as well as issues surrounding less orthodox funds, such as money market funds, ETFs, and private funds. This Handbook will provide legal and financial scholars, academics, lawyers and regulators with a vital tool for working with mutual funds. Contributors include: W.A. Birdthistle, M. Bullard, I.H-Y Chiu, B. Clarke, Q. Curtis, D.A. DeMott, J. Fanto, J.E. Fisch, P. Hanrahan, L.P.Q. Johnson, W.A. Kaal, A.K. Krug, A.B. Laby, J.D. Morley, A. Palmiter, I. Ramsay, E.D. Roiter, M. White, D.A. Zetzsche

A History Today Book of the Year A world-renowned astronomer and an esteemed science writer make the provocative argument for space exploration without astronauts. Human journeys into space fill us with wonder. But the thrill of space travel for astronauts comes at enormous expense and is fraught with peril. As our robot explorers grow more competent, governments and corporations must ask, does our desire to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars justify the cost and danger? Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees believe that beyond low-Earth orbit, space exploration should proceed without humans. In The End of Astronauts, Goldsmith and Rees weigh the benefits and risks of human exploration across the solar system. In space humans require air, food, and water, along with protection from potentially deadly radiation and high-energy particles, at a cost of more than ten times that of robotic exploration. Meanwhile, automated explorers have demonstrated the ability to investigate planetary surfaces efficiently and effectively, operating autonomously or under direction from Earth. Although Goldsmith and Rees are alert to the limits of artificial intelligence, they know that our robots steadily improve, while our bodies do not. Today a robot cannot equal a geologist's expertise, but by the time we land a geologist on Mars, this advantage will diminish significantly. Decades of research and experience, together with interviews with scientific authorities and former astronauts, offer convincing arguments that robots represent the future of space exploration. The End of Astronauts also examines how spacefaring AI might be regulated as corporations race to privatize the stars. We may eventually decide that humans belong in space despite the dangers and expense, but their paths will follow routes set by robots.

Love them or hate them, executive remuneration consultants are key players in remuneration committees’ pay determination processes. This book concerns the professional standards of executive remuneration consultants (and their ‘in-house’ counterparts; for example, Human Resources Director and Head of Reward) in providing remuneration committee advisory services. The author is a 25-year ‘veteran’ executive remuneration consultant, having worked around the world in this capacity (particularly in the financial services sector). This book is based on a qualitative empirical doctoral research exercise, involving 53 participants in the UK executive pay scene (including regulators, institutional shareholder bodies, proxy advisors, remuneration committees’ chairs/members, executive remuneration consultants and in-house executive reward specialists). The objective was to formulate conclusions that could be used to the benefit of UK practice and contribute to the relevant academic scholarship on executive remuneration consultants. The research covered 18 aspects, ranging from an examination of the independence of such consultants to whether there might be a specialised accreditation/qualification and/or licence to practise regime covering their services. It provides novel insights into this previously under-researched area of corporate governance/financial regulation. This book will be of interest to those involved in the UK executive remuneration scene, whether government, regulators or any of the other parties mentioned already (plus academics in universities and business schools). It is hoped too that overseas remuneration regimes that have respects in common with the UK’s will find this book useful.

Successfully combines black letter law with a socio-legal approach making it highly accessible for non-law students who need to know the essentials Essential updates in the new edition cover: post-Grenfell legislation, modern methods of construction, new forms of contracts (NE4 and JCT 2016) and the Construction Playbook Includes slides for lecturers

An all-time bestseller, Dolf de Roos's classic "Real Estate Riches" shows you how to find great deals and make great profits in the real estate market. You?ll learn why real estate is such a reliable moneymaker and how to achieve the biggest return possible on your investment. Full of time-honored wisdom, proven tactics, and quick-and-easy tips, this book shows you how to find the best properties with the most potential, analyze deals, negotiate and submit offers, effectively manage properties, and dramatically increase the value of your real estate without spending much money. If you want to be your own boss and quit the nine-to-five life, "Real Estate Riches" shows you how.

Embedded finance is here and having global impact. Are you ready for it? In Embedded Finance: When Payments Become An Experience, veteran growth strategists, entrepreneurs, and fintech disruptors Scarlett Sieber and Sophie Guibaud deliver a thought-provoking and page-turning discussion on the most impactful and exciting trend of fintech yet: embedded finance. In the book, you'll explore the past, present, and future of fintech, from how embedded finance is being leveraged today by industry heavyweights like Google and Amazon to supercharge their customers' experience to the offerings of smaller, niche players who stand poised to dominate their own corners of the market as their answer unmet customers' needs. The authors present: Practical examples around the world of how embedded finance is being used today by technology companies and brands to redefine our online and offline retail experiences as we know them The key trends, players, and technologies that are paving the way for embedded finance to take a dominant position in our lives The role, opportunities, and strategies for banks, technology companies and brands, providing them with all necessary tools to define their own embedded finance strategy The impact of embedded finance on society, consumers, companies, and the economy as a whole, highlighting the dominant force that is embedded finance for our future An exciting view of how our day-to-day lives will look like in 2030, powered by embedded finance An indispensable and eye-opening exploration of one of the most exciting and influential technologies in development today, Embedded Finance details a revolution in financial services, banking, and technology that has already begun. Are you ready?

This excellent book provides a welcome collection of David Teece's most important writings in the related areas of strategy and technology and their implications for public policy.These papers are the result of an ambitious agenda to analyse concepts in economics, organizational theory and management policy to provide a uniquely integrated global view of strategy, technology and public policy. Key topics which are addressed include: fundamental issues in strategic management technology and technology transfer antitrust regulation and deregulation technology policy The volume also includes an extensive introduction which provides a biographical insight into the development of the author's career and his continuing research into the areas the articles in this volume exlore. David Teece's style of writing is succinct and logical and the material presented in this volume, and in its companion Economic Performance and the Theory of the Firm, will be of great interest to economists, managers, consultants and policy makers.

In an economy that's more unpredictable than ever-the proven method for avoiding emotional mistakes that can wreak havoc on your portfolio returns Applying powerful behavioral finance concepts, Stop. Think. Invest. provides a framework for identifying personal biases and avoiding mistakes that can cost them big profits. Based on the author's extensive research and 100 key behavioral finance concepts, this guide provides a winning 12-step process you can use to successfully manage your trading and investing for long-term success, including: Begin the Initial Research into a New Stock Create an Investment Thesis: Why Are You Buying the Stock? Trade Timing and Size: When Are You Buying and How Much? Make the Initial Purchase Review of Trade: Round Up or Round Down Test Your Original Investment Thesis Stop. Think. Invest. reveals important information about behavioral finance flaws, such as anchoring, confirmation bias, recency bias, and loss aversion. Unlike other such investing guides, Stop. Think. Invest. offers a fully organized and practical approach to applying behavioral finance to everyday investing.

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2016 We all depend on the finance sector. We need it to store our money, manage our payments, finance housing stock, restore infrastructure, fund retirement and support new business. But these roles comprise only a tiny sliver of the sector's activity: the vast majority of lending is within the finance sector. So what is it all for? What is the purpose of this activity? And why is it so profitable? John Kay, a distinguished economist with wide experience of the financial sector, argues that the industry's perceived profitability is partly illusory, and partly an appropriation of wealth created elsewhere - of other people's money. The financial sector, he shows, has grown too large, detached itself from ordinary business and everyday life, and has become an industry that mostly trades with itself, talks to itself, and judges itself by reference to standards which it has itself generated. And the outside world has itself adopted those standards, bailing out financial institutions that have failed all of us through greed and mismanagement. We need finance, but today we have far too much of a good thing. In Other People's Money John Kay shows in his inimitable style what has gone wrong in the dark heart of finance.

Baumol's Cost Disease is the inevitable escalation of the real costs that occur in labour-intensive industries like the arts, health care and education. The labour costs in these industries tend to increase at the same rate as other industries, but their scope for utilizing labour-saving technical progress is either small or non-existent.The book opens with an introduction by Ruth Towse in which there is an overview of William Baumol's work. In this discussion Ruth Towse examines Baumol's work in the context of the development of the economics of the arts. The volume is then divided into parts and begins by introducing William Baumol's work through several autobiographical essays. This is followed by some of his early contributions to cultural economics and the cost disease. William Baumol's leading macroeconomic work on the 'unbalanced growth model' is also included and the debate about it at its inception. In parts three and four some of the more empirical papers on the arts are presented as well as essays on policy implications for the arts. Following this are chapters on the theatre and publishing as well as historical studies of the arts and the implications of the cost disease for libraries, health care and education. This book contains William Baumol's contribution to cultural economics and spans over 30 years of writing on the subject, much of which is not widely available. It provides a real insight into the development of Baumol's analysis and his perception of the problems of the arts and other labour-intensive sectors.

Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock. And they don't just own financial assets. The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and even the homes in which many of us live-all now swell asset managers' bulging investment portfolios. As the owners of more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, asset managers shape the lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. In this eye-opening follow-up to Rentier Capitalism, Brett Christophers peels back the veil on ""asset manager society."" Asset managers, he shows, are unlike traditional owners of housing and other essential infrastructure. Buying and selling these life-supporting assets at a dizzying pace, the crux of their business model is not long-term investment and careful custodianship but making quick profits for themselves and the investors that back them. In asset manager society, the natural and built environments that sustain us become one more vehicle for siphoning money from the many to the few.

Financial reform has been a major concern for China's transitional economy - especially in the realms of banking and insurance - since accession to the WTO in 2001. This book scrutinizes the development and limitations of these industries during the process of institutional transformation, and demonstrates that they are now facing severe challenges as well as opportunities. The relationships between the market structure, behavior and performance of China's banking and insurance industries are analysed. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat (SWOT) approach is utilized in investigating the impact of WTO accession on Chinese banking and insurance, and strategies for the prevention of future financial crises are prescribed. Exploring the juxtaposition of institutional transformation in China and the financial risk inherent in the old system, the book concludes that with WTO accession and the opening up of financial services to foreign companies, competitiveness will become fiercer, resulting in increased uncertainty, intensifying the level of risk even further. Banking and Insurance in the New China will prove invaluable to multinational enterprise managers, brokers, dealers and investors, business economists, students and academics with a specific interest in the Chinese economy.

There are crashes and then there are Crashes. But what turns an ordinary downturn into an era-defining crisis? What makes the difference between an event like the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and a brief bear market? The answer lies in financial exuberance: speculative mania that appears to be making everyone rich, only to end up making everyone much, much worse off. Historian and professional investor Alasdair Nairn predicted both the dotcom and subprime collapses, and in this compelling new book shares the evidence that we are living through such a period of deadly excess right now. Markets appear to be going up and up, but they have got perilously ahead of themselves. Danger lies in every single investable asset class. What some have called the 'Everything Bubble' has inflated to unprecedented proportions. And now the bubble is about to burst. Nairn lays bare the level of danger with unprecedented detail and pieces together the steps that brought us to the precipice. Lastly, he points out options open to those willing to act now to avoid future harm to their wealth. As we near the end of the Everything Bubble, don't be one of those caught out!

"Captivating . . . [Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House." -Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal "Ways and Means, an account of the Union's financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . . Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge." -Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country's history Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy's secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity-the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the "more perfect union" that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern "for" its people: it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln's vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback-paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North's financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields. Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Contemporary financial markets have been characterized by sociocultural phenomena such as "meme stocks", the Gamestop short squeeze, and "You Only Live Once (YOLO) trading". These are movements led by small-scale retail investors banding together to participate forcefully in financial markets through decentralized but coordinated actions. This book deploys many different subdisciplines to explore the recent ‘power grabbing’ of retail investors and the online environment that enables them to join the ranks of major financial players, and participate in contemporary capitalism. It offers multiple perspectives on the genesis, role, motivations, power, and future prospects of retail investors as a force in contemporary financial markets. Drawing upon the insights of authors hailing from many different countries, the book frames YOLO capitalism through numerous angles that help to explain the context and the importance of activist retail investors in modern financial markets, and thereby explore the possibilities of a transformed financial future with much wider small-scale participation. The book assesses the potential of online - and other - communities in enabling global coordination in impacting or even driving financial and crypto markets, and the challenges that come with it and weighs the competing narratives both positive and negative regarding YOLO capitalism. It strikes a balanced assessment of their legal, cultural, behavioural, economic, and political roles in modern finance. This book will be of interest to a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary audience of scholars in financial markets, financial regulation, political economy, public administration, macroeconomics, corporate governance, and the philosophy and the sociology of finance.

Critically acclaimed investigative reporter and CNBC personality Charles Gasparino demonstrates how the ongoing tumult in financial markets is part of a much larger story that entails some of the world's most esteemed financial institutions selling out their responsibility - not just to their own shareholders, but to millions of outside investors and to the American public. "The Sellout" shows how and why America's largest investment banks have suffered staggering losses in assets and influence, triggering the vast financial crisis that is now devastating the United States and institutions across the globe. This page-turning narrative captures how avarice, arrogance, and sheer stupidity eroded Wall Street's dominance, made many of the US' most fabled financial institutions vulnerable to significant new foreign control, and profoundly weakened the financial security of millions of poor and middle-class American families.

This is the second edition of a tax reference which brings together information on the provisions of 58 tax treaties between 12 major trading nations - Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, UK and USA. The guide for revenue officials and tax advisors examines the background of double tax agreements and how they are brought into force. Further sections deal with matters including equipment leasing, the problem of treaty overrides and taxation of sportsmen and entertainers, and transfer pricing.;Article by article, the book reproduces the text of the the OECD Model and provides a short additional commentary. This is followed by an analysis of each countries treaties with each of the other countries dealt with in the book, including details of where they deviate from the OECD model.;"Tax Treaty Networks" also provides help in interpreting special wording used in other treaties by any of the 12 treaty partners - which should also be useful in interpreting the wording of treaties made by countries outside the present scope of the book.

In this third volume of The Deals of Warren Buffett, we trace Warren Buffett's journey as he made Berkshire Hathaway the largest company in America. When we left Buffett at the end of Volume 2, he had reached a fortune of $1bn. In this enthralling next instalment, we follow Buffett's investment deals over the decade from 1989 to 1998, as Berkshire shares jumped 14-fold from $4,700 to $68,000 and its market cap grew from $5bn to $100bn. This was a period of Buffett's career when he was approaching normal retirement age. But far from slowing down, he was just hitting his stride. Buffett was as driven as ever to seek out great companies at good prices. By studying the decision-making that went into his investment deals, and the successful and unsuccessful outcomes, we can learn from Buffett and become better investors ourselves. In this decade, Buffett made investments in the following companies: Wells Fargo, USAir, American Express, The Shoe Group, Helzberg Diamond Shops, RC Willey, FlightSafety International, Dairy Queen, NetJets, and General Re. For each of these deals, investing expert and Buffett historian Glen Arnold dives into unprecedented detail to analyse the investment process and the stories of the individuals involved. Arnold's engaging, lucid style transports the reader to the time and place of the deals, to truly appreciate how Buffett was operating.

"The water "coming out of your kitchen tap is four billion years old and might well have been sipped by a "Tyrannosaurus rex." Rather than only three states of water--liquid, ice, and vapor--there is a fourth, "molecular water," fused into rock 400 miles deep in the Earth, and that's where most of the planet's water is found. Unlike most precious resources, water cannot be used up; it can always be made clean enough again to drink--indeed, water can be made so clean that it's toxic. Water is the most vital substance in our lives but also more amazing and mysterious than we appreciate. As Charles Fishman brings vibrantly to life in this surprising and mind-changing narrative, water runs our world in a host of awe-inspiring ways, yet we take it completely for granted. But the era of easy water is over.
Bringing readers on a lively and fascinating journey--from the wet moons of Saturn to the water-obsessed hotels of Las Vegas, where dolphins swim in the desert, and from a rice farm in the parched Australian outback to a high-tech IBM plant that makes an exotic breed of pure water found nowhere in nature--Fishman vividly shows that we've already left behind a century-long golden age when water was thoughtlessly abundant, free, and safe and entered a new era of high-stakes water. In 2008, Atlanta came within ninety days of running entirely out of clean water. California is in a desperate battle to hold off a water catastrophe. And in the last five years Australia nearly ran out of water--and had to scramble to reinvent the country's entire water system. But as dramatic as the challenges are, the deeper truth Fishman reveals is that there is no good reason for us to be overtaken by a global water crisis. We have more than enough water. We just don't think about it, or use it, smartly.
"The Big Thirst "brilliantly explores our strange and complex relationship to water. We delight in watching waves roll in from the ocean; we take great comfort from sliding into a hot bath; and we will pay a thousand times the price of tap water to drink our preferred brand of the bottled version. We love water--but at the moment, we don't appreciate it or respect it. Just as we've begun to reimagine our relationship to food, a change that is driving the growth of the organic and local food movements, we must also rethink how we approach and use water. The good news is that we can. As Fishman shows, a host of advances are under way, from the simplicity of harvesting rainwater to the brilliant innovations devised by companies such as IBM, GE, and Royal Caribbean that are making impressive breakthroughs in water productivity. Knowing what to do is not the problem. Ultimately, the hardest part is changing our water consciousness.
As Charles Fishman writes, "Many civilizations have been crippled or destroyed by an inability to understand water or manage it. We have a huge advantage over the generations of people who have come before us, because we can understand water and we can use it smartly." "The Big Thirst "will forever change the way we think about water, about our essential relationship to it, and about the creativity we can bring to ensuring that we'll always have plenty of it.

This timely book reveals that the budget deficits and accumulating debts that plague modern democracies reflect a clash between two rationalities of governance: one of private property and one of common property. The clashing of these rationalities at various places in society creates forms of societal tectonics that play out through budgeting. The book demonstrates that while this clash is an inherent feature of democratic political economy, it can nonetheless be limited through embracing once again a constitution of liberty. Not all commons settings have tragic outcomes, of course, but tragic outcomes loom large in democratic processes because they entail conflict between two very different forms of substantive rationality; the political and market rationalities. These are both orders that contain interactions among participants, but the institutional frameworks that govern those interactions differ, generating democratic budgetary tragedies. Those tragedies, moreover, are inherent in the conflict between the different rationalities and so cannot be eliminated. They can, as this book argues, be reduced by restoring a constitution of liberty in place of the constitution of control that has taken shape throughout the west over the past century. Economists interested in public finance, public policy and political economy along with scholars of political science, public administration, law and political philosophy will find this book intriguing. Contents: Preface 1. Budgeting: The Elusive Quest for Fiscal Responsibility 2. Budgeting and Political Economy: A Theoretical Framework 3. Budget Deficits, Ricardian Equivalence, and Macro-Micro Supervenience 4. Property Rights, Societal Tectonics, and the Fiscal Commons 5. Parliamentary Assemblies as Peculiar Market Bazaars 6. Taxation, Fiscal Politics, and Political Pricing 7. Regulation as Alternative Taxation 8. Public Finance for a Constitution of Liberty Bibliography Index

An illustrious group of economists contribute to this volume honoring Dick Netzer, the public finance economist well-known for his research on state and local taxation, the provision of urban public services, and non-profit organizations. Following in his tradition, the contributors apply microeconomics to real world problems facing urban areas and use statistical analysis to gain insight into practical solutions. The first four chapters of the book provide in-depth explorations of alternative methods of financing urban government such as: the relative merits of income and property taxation at the local level, the impact of sales and income taxation on property taxation, and the feasibility of adopting a land value tax. The next two chapters focus on government expenditures: the impact of subsidized housing investment on property values, and the theoretical and historical explanations for public ownership and direct provision of public services. The final two chapters of the book turn their attention to the non-profit sector, exploring subsidies to non-profit arts organizations and the role of the non-profit sector in providing K-12 education, specifically addressing the implications for segregation and equity. Comprehensive and engaging, professionals and scholars in the fields of public finance, urban economics and public administration will find this collection of great interest.

ISO 50001 - A strategic guide to establishing an energy management system provides a practical but strategic overview for leadership teams of what an EnMS (energy management system) is and how implementing one can bring added value to an organisation.

This book explores the role of the insurance industry in contributing to, and responding to, the harms that climate change has brought and will bring either directly or indirectly. The Anthropocene signifies a new role for humankind: we are the only species that has become a driving force in the planetary system. What might criminology be in the Anthropocene? What does the Anthropocene suggest for future theory and practice of criminology? Criminology and Climate, as part of Routledge's Criminology at the Edge Series, seeks to contribute to this research agenda by exploring differing vantage points relevant to thinking within criminology. Contemporary societies are presented with myriad intersecting and interacting climate-related harms at multiple scales. Criminology and Climate brings attention to the finance sector, with a particular focus on the insurance industry as one of its most significant components, in both generating and responding to new climate 'harmscapes'. Bringing together thought leaders from a variety of disciplines, this book considers what finance and insurance have done and might still do, as 'fulcrum institutions', to contribute to the realisation of safe and just planetary spaces. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law and environmental studies and provides readers with a basis to analyse the challenges and opportunities for the finance sector, and in particular the insurance industry, in the regulation of climate harms.

European economies have been plagued by successive crises, from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) to the COVID-19 pandemic, through to the economic and geopolitical instability in Ukraine. These events, the uncertainty they generate combined with dynamic technological progress and significant sociocultural changes, have profoundly modified the character of modern finance. Understanding what happened, what mechanisms worked, and the reaction of the banking sector, bank customers, and policymakers require an in-depth and structured analysis. This book critically assesses the impact of these events, notably the COVID-19 pandemic, on the performance of the banking sector in Europe and serves as a compendium of knowledge on recent changes in European banking from two perspectives: firstly, European banking transformation, analyzing the process of what has already taken place, in particular, the GFC and COVID-19 crises; secondly, the challenges facing the operations and strategic management of European banks. It identifies specific areas of impact on the activity of commercial banks and the determining factors that will shape the economic and financial condition of banks and their customers – borrowers – in the future. Risk management, particularly credit risk, is a key focus of this volume. Each chapter, implicitly or explicitly, address a variety of questions that can help the reader to understand the complex nature of the transformation of the banking sector. The book provides a structured reference for those concerned with the impact of volatility on the business models of modern banks. As such, it will find a broad audience among students, academics, banking, financial, business, and industry professionals, policymakers, and market regulators.