July 2007
| Euromoney July 2007 Find out which institutions have excelled this year in providing high-quality products and services across all areas of commercial and investment banking. - Ken Lewis interview: Bank of America’s next step forward
In the July 2007 edition of Euromoney, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis gave a rare in-depth interview.
Lewis said: "We are not believers in the build it and they will come mantra. We need to look our shareholders in the eye". "In time, we want to be one of the top five investment banks in the world". More than 18 months ago Euromoney said: "Bank of America is at a tipping point. Ken Lewis is about to face his biggest challenge yet." Little did we know how great the challenge would be. Re-read the story here - John Mack interview: Morgan Stanley’s reversal of fortunes
John Mack has the job he always wanted. One of Wall Street’s leading firms has the leader it desperately needed. Morgan Stanley is now the investment bank with momentum. Mack and his senior management tell Clive Horwood how they revived the firm’s fortunes.
- Awards for Excellence 2007: Best M&A House
Its pivotal role in the most important transactions of a hectic year in M&A makes Goldman Sachs the outstanding player in the most competitive market of all. - Awards for Excellence 2007 Off the record special
- How Itaú became the best of the best
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Euromoney July 2007
Corporate treasurers are keeping a close eye on the new regulations that will impact on cash management. The Payment Services Directive is due this autumn – another step forward – yet the timetable for Sepa is still vague. Even identifying the benefits of the changes is a matter of hot debate. Julian Marshall reports.
Euromoney July 2007
Commodities offer a means of diversifying investment portfolios, and of bringing down volatility. They can also offer good returns to the savvy investor. But the markets still have some way to go in terms of increasing sophistication.
Euromoney July 2007
All the global players have a presence in Australia, which is the fourth-largest asset management market in the world. Chris Wright looks at their strategies.
Euromoney July 2007
As covered bond markets continue to thrive worldwide, it appears that the demands of ratings agencies might be becoming a stumbling block.
Euromoney July 2007
The third draft of Italy’s covered bond legislation has been published.
Euromoney July 2007
Great-West Lifeco (GWL) has priced the first Canadian dollar-denominated, tax-deductible hybrid capital transaction.
Euromoney July 2007
The buzz surrounding the launch of the new Q-WIXX CDS trading platform suggests that it is one of the most eagerly awaited, and supported, product launches in years.
Euromoney July 2007
ANZ combined a number of features on its latest tier-1 deal that allowed it to cut the premium an issuer normally pays to access institutional investors without a coupon step-up at the call date. The £450 million ($898 million) tier-1 perpetual paper was ANZ’s first sterling capital security.
Euromoney July 2007
New head of European flow credit trading; new head of European investment-grade trading.
Euromoney July 2007
Head appointed of a new strategic solutions group.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
A new generation of CDOs assumes spreads will probably widen.
Euromoney July 2007
S&P stance tempers optimism.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Competition for real estate expertise in Europe heats up.
Euromoney July 2007
A new index might increase both liquidity and volatility.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Decisions by two leading banks to allow clients to post bids and offers on their platforms call into question the need for multi-bank portals.
Euromoney July 2007
The launch of further FX indices by Citi and Axa underlines the acceptance of FX as an asset class, which has attractions across the entire investment spectrum.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
New service aims to introduce competitive auction for programme trades.
Euromoney July 2007
The launch of faster, higher-capacity systems by exchanges will make life harder for ATSs.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Numbers of specialists up 63%, to over 300 since Sept ‘05.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Big potential seen in mobile communications and financial services.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Global Maritime Investments fund has annualized net returns of more than 30%.
Founder/partner Steve Rodley of manager M2M explains to Helen Avery how shipping hedge funds are meeting investor demand for diversification and performance.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Ask any foreign partner involved in a Sino-foreign public-private partnership (PPP) deal and they will tell you that they are far from straightforward to complete. So plans to establish, fund and build China’s first fully digital world-class hospital are not going to be easy.
Euromoney July 2007
Proxy season in Japan is in full swing, with hundreds of companies holding annual general meetings at the end of June, often on the same date. There is nothing new in that: Japanese companies began clustering shareholder meetings in this way years ago to avoid extortion by yakuza (Japan’s criminal gangs), who would threaten disruptive action unless they were paid off.
Euromoney July 2007
One of the most puzzling aspects of Asia’s headlong economic growth has been the conspicuous absence of inflation. Despite net foreign exchange inflows of more than $2 trillion since 2000, money supply and credit growth have actually fallen sharply in Asia.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Neil Wilson, editorial director at HedgeFund Intelligence, argues that there is little substance to the conspiracy theories that dog private equity.
Euromoney July 2007
Emerging markets remain the primary driver of hedge fund returns for 2007 so far, but all of HFI’s indices continue to outperform the MSCI index in the long term.
Euromoney July 2007
Move helps normalize relations with international financial community.
Euromoney July 2007
Latin America’s largest issuers have for a while been competing on pretty much a level playing field with their competitors in fully developed countries. That’s important for Brazilian miner Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, which in the wake of its acquisition of Canada’s Inco is now one of the world’s four largest mining companies, alongside BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Anglo American.
Euromoney July 2007
Banking analysts are starting to ring alarm bells about Brazil – in recent months there has been a rapid increase in consumer lending by local banks, but this came hand in hand with a large increase in the non-performing loan market.
Euromoney July 2007
June marks the beginning of the hurricane season in the Caribbean, and every year there’s a chance that any given island will suffer devastating losses to infrastructure, property and life.
Euromoney July 2007
Oil firms Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips have pulled out of Venezuela following president Hugo Chávez’s latest round of nationalizations, in which he proposed huge increases in state participation in projects run by the two US companies and four others.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
In a move that demonstrates the broadening appeal of Russian assets, HSBC Investments has launched the first pure Russian equity fund for Japanese investors, raising more than $150 million since launching a marketing campaign at the end of March.
Euromoney July 2007
UniCredit stole a march on its banking rivals in late June with the signing of an agreement to buy at least 85% of Kazakhstan’s fifth-largest financial services provider, ATF Bank. The roughly $2.2 billion transaction will catapult the Italian bank to the top of the foreign bank pile in the oil-rich central Asian republic, with UniCredit leapfrogging such rivals as Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and ING, which all have long-established operations in the country.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
The UK’s Prudential and Bank Aljazira, Saudi Arabia’s smallest bank, have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote takaful or Islamic insurance in the kingdom.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
In June, investors began to reject low returns on subordinated structures such as PIK toggle notes from riskier issuers. It will be tougher for sponsors to pile more debt on their already leveraged acquisitions. But public company managers aren’t free from the private equity threat.
Euromoney July 2007
The storm clouds that were once on the horizon are now overhead.
Euromoney July 2007
Who is there to save the day when hedge funds have a blow-up? Why, it’s other hedge funds, which can make a profit clearing up the mess.
Euromoney July 2007
A basket approach to pricing currencies could help curb Gulf inflation.
Euromoney July 2007
As some banks – and a tiny few aspirant young bankers – have realized, there’s good business to be built in the out-of-fashion traditional investment-grade debt capital markets.
Euromoney July 2007
Traders hoping that an uptick in volatility is here to stay should be careful what they wish for.
Euromoney July 2007
The sheer size and influence of sovereign wealth funds is attracting attention – not all of it positive.
Euromoney July 2007
The world economy is set to keep growing fast for the next few months. But this will take an inevitable toll on the cost of capital, which is already rising.
Euromoney July 2007
There’s trouble brewing in the Chinese stock market. But a short, sharp shock could be just what is needed.
Euromoney July 2007
As margin lenders to the two struggling Bear Stearns hedge funds High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Master Fund and High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Master Fund scrambled to avert losses in late June, another vehicle with links to the funds was facing up to problems of its own. Everquest Financial, which was recently formed by Bear Stearns (and had filed a registration with the SEC on May 9 to list), is one of a raft of new listed permanent capital vehicles that have been investing in the equity and first-loss parts of structured credit investments and been hailed as a vital new source of liquidity in this market.
Euromoney July 2007
As the managers of the two Bear Stearns high-grade hedge funds that have attracted such unwelcome publicity over the past month squirm in the spotlight, they must be wondering where they went wrong.
Euromoney July 2007
Wall Street investment bankers were agog at the news. Could it really be that Jimmy Quigley, debt capital markets legend and icon of Merrill Lynch’s dominance of the primary bond markets in the 1990s, had become an accountant?
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007
The ability to hold a tune may not be top of the list of talents required to succeed in the cut-throat structured finance industry – but that could all be set to change. Not many sectors of the capital markets industry can boast their very own band but the ABS market can: the painfully entitled D’Leverage.
Euromoney July 2007
Euromoney July 2007