Mayra Rodriguez Valladares
Mayra Rodriguez Valladares is a senior contributor at Forbes who covers finance through the lens of a veteran financial risk consultant, focusing on how regulation, market structure and risk management decisions affect investors and the wider economy. Her work draws on decades of consulting and training experience in bank regulation, capital and derivatives markets, risk-based supervision and Environmental, Social and Governance standards. She concentrates on the points where Wall Street risk-taking, deregulation, and complex credit markets translate into systemic vulnerabilities and concrete costs for households, workers and communities.
Bank regulation, capital standards and oversight
Rodriguez Valladares writes extensively about bank capital rules and supervisory frameworks, grounding her coverage in long experience with Basel III, Dodd-Frank and risk-based supervision. Her analyses of capital proposals and regulatory reforms examine how changes in buffers and oversight affect the resilience of the banking system and the capacity of the economy to absorb shocks. She has highlighted the importance of operational resilience and robust supervisory principles for banks, including work on how institutions should implement frameworks to withstand disruptions.
Her perspective on deregulation in financial booms, including pieces such as “Deregulating In A Financial Boom - Why Governor Barr Is Right,” underscores the risks of loosening rules when asset prices are elevated and leverage is high.
Across these articles she links technical rulemaking to real-world outcomes, explaining how adjustments in capital, liquidity and governance standards can either mitigate or amplify systemic risk. She also traces the interactions between regulators and markets, writing about regulatory overreach, accountability at central banks and the broader economic consequences of supervisory choices.
Her coverage keeps the focus on prudential safety and the long-term health of the financial system rather than short-term gains from lighter regulation.
Private credit, private equity and nonbank financial risks
A substantial strand of Rodriguez Valladares’s work dissects the growth of private credit and private equity, with a particular focus on opacity, leverage and spillovers to the regulated banking sector. In articles such as “Private Credit: Trying To Count The Cockroaches” and “Rising Private Credit Defaults Are Testing Banks And Insurers,” she details how rising defaults and limited transparency in these markets challenge risk management both for lenders and for investors.
She has examined historically high levels of bank lending to private credit and non-banks, warning that exposures to lightly regulated counterparties can transmit stress back into the core of the financial system. Her reporting on debt levels in private equity and private credit frames these trends as a concern for regulators charged with safeguarding financial stability.
Rodriguez Valladares also follows the labor-market and ratings impact of private-equity-backed business models, including distressed credit ratings and significant retail job losses at portfolio companies. She has covered studies on the adverse economic effects of private equity buyouts and criticized structures where executives profit from hardship borne by prisoners and their families. This body of work connects the mechanics of deal financing and covenant-light lending to outcomes in employment, corporate resilience and investor protection, stressing that nonbank credit booms carry social as well as balance-sheet risks.
Geopolitics, energy and climate as system-wide hazards
Rodriguez Valladares frequently situates financial risk within a broader geopolitical and energy context, analyzing how regional tensions and commodity price swings filter through capital markets. In “Ancient Fault Lines, Modern Capital Markets: The Middle East Effect,” she explores how long-standing regional conflicts shape modern market dynamics and investor risk. Her work on higher oil prices, including “How Higher Oil Prices Are Rippling Through American Household Budgets,” tracks how energy shocks affect consumer finances and the transmission of inflationary pressure.
She has argued for treating climate as a systemic risk, emphasizing the need to build resilience within banking and financial systems as environmental stresses intensify.
Her coverage of environmental deregulation, such as “Zeldin's EPA Deregulation Increases Risks For Wall Street Investors,” frames policy changes at agencies overseeing pollution and climate-related rules as material factors for financial risk. She connects these shifts to investor exposure and to the capacity of markets and institutions to absorb climate-related losses.
This thread of her reporting shows a consistent effort to link policy, geopolitics and environmental decisions to concrete vulnerabilities in portfolios, balance sheets and financial infrastructure.
Market plumbing, investor protection and Main Street impact
Rodriguez Valladares pays close attention to the “plumbing” of markets and its implications for both Wall Street and Main Street. In “Private Markets Have A Plumbing Problem - The Industry Needs To Modernize,” she examines settlement, data and operational weaknesses in private markets and argues that outdated systems heighten risk for participants. Her article “Fed Warning: America's Financial System Is Strong But Risks Are Rising” combines central bank assessments with her own analysis of emerging vulnerabilities, highlighting areas where market structure and leverage could undermine apparent strength. She has also written on campaigns to roll back rules on Wall Street and asked who ultimately bears the losses when banks mismanage risk, underscoring how deregulation can shift costs onto households and taxpayers.
Beyond specific institutions, Rodriguez Valladares returns frequently to the theme of prioritizing Main Street, including work on the impact of capital proposals on economic growth and American communities. She has scrutinized regulators’ holistic performance, weighing both under- and over-regulation and their economic consequences. Her broader bibliography includes hundreds of pieces on derivatives, financial regulations and other finance topics, published not only at Forbes but also in outlets such as American Banker, Bloomberg, Crain’s Business, The Hill and The New York Times.
Across this output she combines technical detail with an insistence on tracing who wins, who loses and how complex financial decisions translate into everyday economic outcomes.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.