THE WEEK AHEAD
America’s banks take centre stage at the start of the year
Retailers and housebuilders prepare to update the City with trading updates
Wells Fargo and several other leading American banks will reveal how they have fared over the past quarter
DAVID JENSEN/ICON SPORTSWIRE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Lending money is easy. It’s getting paid back that can be the hard part. Standard & Poor’s reckons that the world’s borrowers will default on $2.5 trillion of loans in the next three years — not far shy from the equivalent of an entire year’s GDP in Britain — as the shift away from the era of ultra-low interest rates flushes out more casualties and bank write-offs.
Full-year results from America’s biggest banks therefore will be watched with particular interest this week. JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo all report on Friday. The US economy may be looking already at rates starting to fall (and bank share prices have pushed sharply higher since November), but for now bankruptcies in the United States
