Industry WIKI

VP Bank AG is a Liechtenstein-based bank headquartered in Vaduz and specialized in private banking. It was founded on April 6, 1956 by Princely Councillor of Commerce Guido Feger and is one of the three major banks in Liechtenstein along with the LGT Group and the LLB.

A vulture fund is a hedge fund or private-equity fund that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default, known as distressed debt. Investors in the fund profit by buying debt at a discounted price on a secondary market and then using numerous methods to sell the debt for more than the purchasing price. Debtors include companies, countries, and individuals.

Wagner's law, also known as the law of increasing state activity, is the observation that public expenditure increases as national income rises. It is named after the German economist Adolph Wagner (1835–1917), who first observed the effect in his own country and then for other countries.

The Wall Street Journal Dollar Index (WSJ Dollar Index) is an index (or measure) of the value of the U.S. dollar relative to 16 foreign currencies.

Walton Enterprises LLC (WEI) is an American investment holding company based in Bentonville, Arkansas, that serves as a family office to manage the wealth of the Walton family, the owners of Walmart.

A war profiteer is any individual or organization that earns excessive or unethical profit from warfare or by selling weapons, supplies, or services to parties engaged in conflict. The term typically carries strong negative connotations and is often associated with exploitation during times of national crisis. More broadly profiteering, making a profit, criticized as excessive or unreaso

Warner Music Group Corp., commonly abbreviated as WMG, is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "Big Three" recording companies and the third-largest in the global music industry, after Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group.

In financial transactions, a warrant is a written order by one person that instructs or authorises another person to pay a specified recipient a specific amount of money or supply goods at a specific date. A warrant may or may not be negotiable and may be a bearer instrument that authorises payment to the warrant holder on demand or after a specific date. Governments and businesses may p

Washington Mutual, Inc (often abbreviated to WaMu) was an American savings bank holding company based in Seattle. It was the parent company of Washington Mutual Bank, which was the largest savings and loan association in the United States until its collapse in 2008.

A water tariff (often called water rate in the United States and Canada) is a price assigned to water supplied by a public utility through a piped network to its customers. The term is also often applied to wastewater tariffs. Water and wastewater tariffs are not charged for water itself, but to recover the costs of water treatment, water storage, transporting it to customers, collecting

Watered stock is an asset with an artificially-inflated value. The term most commonly refers to a form of securities fraud in which a company issues stock to someone before receiving at least the par value in payment.

The inequality of wealth (i.e., inequality in the distribution of assets) has substantially increased in the United States since the late 1980s. Wealth commonly includes the values of any homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses, savings, and investments, less any associated debts.

Wealth management (WM) or wealth management advisory (WMA) is an investment advisory service that provides financial management and wealth advisory services to a wide array of clients ranging from affluent to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals and families.

Wealthfront Corporation is an American financial services company based in Palo Alto, California, founded by Andy Rachleff and Dan Carroll in 2008. As of September 2026, Wealthfront reported approximately $100 billion assets under management for more than 1.5 million clients.

Wedbush Securities Inc. is a privately held financial services firm based in Los Angeles. As of October 2026, the firm had $6.7 billion under management with 10,833 clients.

The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is the rate that a company is expected to pay on average to all its security holders to finance its assets. The WACC is commonly referred to as the firm's cost of capital. Importantly, it is dictated by the external market and not by management. The WACC represents the minimum return that a company must earn on an existing asset base to satisfy

In finance, the weighted-average life (WAL) of an amortizing loan or amortizing bond, also called average life, is the weighted average of the times of the principal repayments: it's the average time until a dollar of principal is repaid.

WePay is an online payment service provider based in the United States. It provides an integrated and customizable payment solution, through its APIs, to platform businesses such as crowdfunding sites, marketplaces and small business software companies. It also offers partners fraud and risk protection.

What Has Government Done to Our Money? is a 1963 book by Murray N. Rothbard that details the history of money, from early barter systems, to the gold standard, to present day systems of paper money.

Whitewashing in beauty is a term used to describe the alteration of the appearance of non-white people in fashion, digital photography, mass media, marketing, and advertising to make them appear whiter. Whitewashing can include altering skin tone through digital retouching or skin-whitening products, changing hair texture through chemical treatments to conform to beauty standards associa

Whole-life cost is the total cost of ownership over the life of an asset. The concept is also known as life-cycle cost (LCC) or lifetime cost, and is commonly referred to as "cradle to grave" or "womb to tomb" costs. Costs considered include the financial cost which is relatively simple to calculate and also the environmental and social costs which are more difficult to quantify and assi

The Wiener Börse AG (also known as the Vienna Stock Exchange) is a bourse situated in Vienna, Austria. The exchange owns and operates the Prague Stock Exchange, and holds stakes in energy exchanges and clearing houses. It provides market infrastructure to other exchanges in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (Budapest, Zagreb, and Ljubljana), and collects and distributes stock mar

The WIG20 is a capitalization-weighted stock market index of the twenty largest companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Established on April 16, 1994. WIG is an acronym for "Warszawski Indeks Giełdowy", which translates to Warsaw Stock Index in Polish. However, so that no sector would dominate the index, the rule was introduced that there can be a maximum of 5 companies per sector. In th

William Henry Trotter Bush, CStJ (July 14, 1938 – February 27, 2018) was an American banker and businessman. A scion of the Bush family, he was the youngest son of US Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush, the youngest brother of former president George H. W. Bush, and an uncle of former president George W. Bush and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

William Sydney Fisher (born 1958) is an American hedge fund manager. He has been a director of Gap Inc. since 2009, and the founder and chief executive officer of Manzanita Capital Limited. The son of Gap Inc. founders Donald Fisher and Doris F. Fisher, William Fisher has been involved with the company as a board member or employee for nearly 30 years.

William S. "Bill" Price III is an American businessman, investor, and winemaker. He is one of the three co-founders and a partner emeritus of the private equity firm TPG Capital, formerly known as the Texas Pacific Group.

Willow Wealth Inc. (formerly Yieldstreet) is an American financial technology company headquartered in New York City that operates an online platform for alternative investments. The platform enables accredited investors and retail investors to access private market asset classes including real estate, private credit, private equity, art, and legal finance. As of 2025, the platform repor

WinCapita, previously WinClub and GiiClub, was a Finnish Internet-based Ponzi scheme that advertised itself as a private investment club engaged in currency trading. In reality, it was a bucket shop like many other foreign exchange fraud schemes. It operated mainly in Finland, with a smaller number of members also in Sweden. The operation collected about 100 million euros from more than

Window guidance (Japanese: 窓口指導) or informal guidance, is an informal policy instrument used to regulate the supply of credit in a specific industry or sector. Window guidance typically involves the use of benevolent compulsion in order to regulate the supply of credit as a way to achieve policy targets such as sustainability. Window guidance involves the use of monetary policy instrumen

Winklevoss Capital is a family office founded in 2012 by Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss. The firm invests across multiple asset classes including seed funding and infrastructure to early-stage startups. The company is headquartered in New York's Flatiron District.

Wire transfer, bank transfer, or credit transfer, is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or entity to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account, or through a transfer of cash at a cash office.

Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, is a British financial technology company focused on global money transfers and Business Finance. Headquartered in London, it was founded by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus in January 2011. As of 2023, it offers three main products: Wise Account, Wise Business, and Wise Platform.

Wolseley UK Limited, headquartered in Warwick, is a distributor of building materials and is the largest trade specialist in plumbing and heating in the UK. It is owned by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, a private equity firm.

Workers' self-management, also referred to as labor management and organizational self-management, is a form of organizational management based on self-directed work processes on the part of an organization's workforce. Self-management is a defining characteristic of socialism, with proposals for self-management having appeared many times throughout the history of the socialist movement,

The President's Working Group on Financial Markets, known colloquially as the Plunge Protection Team, or "(PPT)" was created by Executive Order 12631, signed on March 18, 1988, by United States President Ronald Reagan.

World, also known as World Network, is a humanity verification project and financial network. It was developed and launched as the cryptocurrency project Worldcoin. Among other organizations, contributors to the project include Tools for Humanity, a company founded in 2019 by Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania. World's stated mission is to provide a reliable and anonymous way t

The World Business Angels Association (WBAA) was an international, not-for-profit organization whose mission was to stimulate the exchange of knowledge and best practices in the field of global angel capital financing for high-growth and innovative startups. It was closed around 2017.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. Established on 1 January 1995, pursuant to the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement, it succeeded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1948. As the world's largest international economic organization, the WTO has 166 members, representing over

Worldpay Group plc (formerly RBS WorldPay) was a payment processing company. It was formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange until 16 January 2018 when it was acquired by Vantiv. The combined company then took the name Worldpay, Inc. Worldpay, Inc. was acquired by FIS in July 2019 for $43 billion. In 2024, private-equity firm GTCR acquired a majority 55% equity interest in Worldpay.

The X Tax is an approach to taxation conceived by Princeton University economist and New York University School of Law professor David F. Bradford, It consists of two taxes:

Xometry (formerly, NextLine Manufacturing Corp.) is an online marketplace for sourcing on-demand manufactured parts for prototyping and large-scale production.

XTX Markets Limited is a British algorithmic trading company based in London. It was founded in January 2015 by Alexander Gerko, who is currently co-CEO alongside Hans Buehler. The company employs around 300 people globally (as of 2026) and uses state-of-the-art machine learning technology to produce price forecasts for over 50,000 financial instruments across equities, fixed income, cur

In mathematical finance, X-Value Adjustment (XVA, xVA) is an umbrella term referring to a number of different "valuation adjustments" that banks must make when assessing the value of derivative contracts that they have entered into. The purpose of these is twofold: primarily to hedge for possible losses due to other parties' failures to pay amounts due on the derivative contracts; but al

Yape (pronounced [ˈʝape]) is a digital wallet and mobile payment application developed by the Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP) in 2016. As of 2025, it has over 20 million users. Its features include instant, commission-free peer-to-peer transfers, bill payments, and purchases using a smartphone via a phone number or QR code, without requiring a traditional bank account, enabling its use b

The yen and yuan sign (¥) is a currency sign used to represent the base units yen (Japanese yen) and the Chinese yuan (renminbi) when writing in the Latin script. This character resembles a capital letter Y with a single or double horizontal stroke. The symbol is usually placed before the value it represents, for example: ¥50, or JP¥50 and CN¥50 when disambiguation is needed. When writte

The Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network (YES) is an American pay television regional sports network owned by Yankee Global Enterprises (the largest shareholder with 46%), Amazon (which owns 15%), and the Blackstone Group, RedBird Capital and Mubadala Investment Company, which each own 13% as of April 21, 2026. Primarily serving New York City, New York, and the surrounding metropolit

In finance, the yield on a security is a measure of the ex-ante return to a holder of the security. It is one component of return on an investment, the other component being the change in the market price of the security. It is a measure applied to fixed income securities, common stocks, preferred stocks, convertible stocks and bonds, annuities and real estate investments.

Yield management (YM) is a variable pricing strategy, based on understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior in order to maximize revenue or profits from a fixed, time-limited resource (such as airline seats, hotel room reservations, or advertising inventory). As a specific, inventory-focused branch of revenue management, yield management involves strategic control of inv

In finance, the yield spread or credit spread is the difference between the quoted rates of return on two different investments, usually of different credit qualities but similar maturities. It is often an indication of the risk premium for one investment product over another. The phrase is a compound of yield and spread.

The yield to maturity (YTM), book yield or redemption yield of a fixed-interest security is an estimate of the total rate of return anticipated to be earned by an investor who buys it at a given market price, holds it to maturity, and receives all interest payments and the capital redemption on schedule.

The Beijing Municipal Administration & Communication Card (Chinese: 北京市政交通一卡通; pinyin: Běijīng Shìzhèng jiāotōng Yīkǎtōng), more commonly known as the Yikatong (literally One-card pass), is a stored-value contactless smart card used in Beijing, China, for public transportation and related uses. It is similar to the Octopus card in Hong Kong, CEPAS in Singapore, the OMNY card in New York

Yoga in advertising is the use of images of modern yoga as exercise to market products of any kind, whether related to yoga or not. Goods sold in this way have included canned beer, fast food and computers.

York Capital Management (York Capital) is an American investment management company, founded by James Dinan and headquartered in New York City.

Yozma, Yozma Program, or Yozma Fund was a venture capital organization in Israel that initially started out as a government funded program in 1993 to help kick start venture capital, angel investing, and private equity in Israel's economy. $20 million of government subsidies went to the Yozma Fund, the other $80 million the government provided went to match other foreign and domestic fir

The yuan ( yoo-A(H)N; sign: ¥; Chinese: 圓/元; pinyin: yuán; [ɥæ̌n] ) is the base unit of currency of a number of historical and contemporary currencies throughout Greater China, such as the renminbi in the People's Republic of China and the new Taiwan dollar in the Republic of China (Taiwan). The name of the unit ultimately originates from the late Qing dynasty to refer to Mexican silver

The Z-spread, ZSPRD, zero-volatility spread, or yield curve spread of a bond is the parallel shift or spread over the zero-coupon Treasury yield curve required for discounting a predetermined cash flow schedule to arrive at its present market price. The Z-spread is also widely used in the credit default swap (CDS) market as a measure of credit spread that is relatively insensitive to the

ZachXBT, also identified as Zachary Wolk is a pseudonymous American blockchain investigator and open-source intelligence (OSINT) researcher known for independent forensic investigations into cryptocurrency fraud, scams, and thefts. He has been active on X (formerly Twitter) since 2021, publishing detailed investigative threads that trace stolen funds, expose rug pulls, and identify perpe

Zelle () is an American digital payments network run by a private financial services company owned by Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. The Zelle service enables individuals to electronically transfer money from their bank account to another registered user's bank account (within the United States) using a mobile device or the web

The zero lower bound (ZLB) or zero nominal lower bound (ZNLB) is a macroeconomic problem that occurs when the short-term nominal interest rate is at or near zero, causing a liquidity trap and limiting the central bank's capacity for inflation targeting.

Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a budgeting method that requires all expenses to be justified and approved in each new budget period. It was developed by Peter Pyhrr in the 1970s. This budgeting method analyzes an organization's needs and costs by starting from a "zero base" (meaning no funding allocation) at the beginning of every period. The intended outcome is to assess the efficient us

Ungku Zeti Akhtar binti Ungku Abdul Aziz (born 27 August 1947) is a Malaysian economist who served as the seventh governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia from 2000 to 2016, becoming the first woman to hold the position.