March 2008
| Euromoney March 2008 New accounting rules designed to improve transparency and disclosure were bound to increase noise on financial institutions’ balance sheets. But now they are adding to the credit crunch. |
Euromoney March 2008
As their peers in Europe and the US struggle to adjust to the world post sub-prime, Japan’s megabanks find themselves in the glow of unaccustomed financial health. But how do they put their new-found advantage to best use? And can they ignore the demons that caused such huge mistakes in the past?
Euromoney March 2008
Operating company securitizations had to take a back seat to real estate as UK corporates rode the real estate boom in recent years. But with commercial property valuations in free-fall and the hybrid CMBS market dead in the water are opco/propcos about to make a comeback?
Euromoney March 2008
Hugo Chávez is trying to commit Venezuela to 21st century socialism. In the meantime, private financial services are booming. Buoyed by the oil price, Chávez’s policies keep pumping out money. But can left-wing policies and capitalism work an economic miracle in the long term?
Euromoney March 2008
Structured note sellers had high hopes that property-linked pay-offs would be a big revenue generator in the UK. However, recent real estate upheavals have cast a dark cloud over the market.
Euromoney March 2008
Structured products debate: presents a range of new challenges for providers and distributors of structured notes. Representatives of leading structured products houses discuss those challenges, and the opportunities.
Euromoney March 2008
With no sub-prime problems, real estate bubble or complex credit portfolios to worry about, the country’s banking sector should be a relative safe haven. But while investors remain receptive to their covered bonds, banks are finding liquidity scarce. Peter Koh reports.
Euromoney March 2008
When global events blew across the stock market, it sent Portugal’s smaller companies scurrying back into their shells just as they were being tempted out. That leaves only the biggest prepared to face the storm.
Euromoney March 2008
Will the long-awaited recovery in the German real estate market be stopped in its tracks by turmoil in the debt markets? Louise Bowman reports.
Euromoney March 2008
Private equity in Turkey is finally gaining momentum. For the country’s first independent private equity firm, launching its second fund, it’s not a moment too soon.
Euromoney March 2008
Egypt’s banking system is undergoing wide-ranging reforms designed to make it more competitive. Have the lessons from the past finally been learnt?
Euromoney March 2008
Eloy Garcia spent 35 years at the Inter-American Development Bank, most recently as a treasurer, before retiring last year. Now a professor at Johns Hopkins University, he tells Sudip Roy of the enormous challenges the bank and the Latin American region have faced and the progress made.
Euromoney March 2008
Brazil’s private bankers are eagerly seeking out the means to differentiate themselves from rivals and attract the rich shoal of high-net-worth individuals a market boom has created.
Euromoney March 2008
Infrastructure financing has become synonymous with Brazilian president Lula’s second-term government. As the country enters the first stage of its largest ever hydroelectric project there is a growing demand for funds that the local market is struggling to source. Chloe Hayward reports from São Paulo.
Euromoney March 2008
LATIN AMERICA ONLINE EXTRA:
Mexico’s structured finance market continues to grow on the back
of its housing boom.
Euromoney March 2008
Large Latin American companies with substantial exposure to foreign investment are adapting rapidly to the need for good corporate governance and receptive investor relations. But there is still a hard core of resistance to change from family-centred businesses. John Rumsey reports.
Euromoney March 2008
The US is in danger of dropping out of the top 10 in our semi-annual
country risk survey as fears of an economic downturn and an uncertain
political future dent analysts’ confidence.
Euromoney March 2008
Inflation, far from being a thing of the past, is back in the forefront of investors’ and issuers’ minds. The increased use of innovations such as liability-driven investment means a rise in demand for inflation-linked products. How are the markets responding?
Euromoney March 2008
Fitch’s proposed new methodology will tighten CDO ratings, and Moody’s is considering abolishing its current ratings scale altogether.
Euromoney March 2008
Far from turning a corner in 2008, the market looks set for a few tough months yet.
Euromoney March 2008
The record number of ratings downgrades in structured finance has fundamentally altered the market’s dynamic.
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
It seems they may be using support to grow balance sheets rather than to roll funding.
Euromoney March 2008
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Euromoney March 2008
Reserve managers are unlikely to suddenly adjust foreign currency holdings and latest IMF data suggest they will not chase the euro higher.
Euromoney March 2008
As an agreement between FXall and ITG shows, multi-asset platforms can be created virtually.
Euromoney March 2008
The latest bout of blood-letting at the bank may only tarnish its reputation further.
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
The main clearing houses in Europe have had a busy few years.
Euromoney March 2008
Since launching in 2007, Chi-X, the pan-European multilateral trading facility run by Nomura’s Instinet, has made notable inroads into the market for trading German stocks, regularly trading more than 15% of the daily turnover of blue-chip companies such as BASF. At the same time, however, Xetra, Deutsche Börse’s order book, has increased its market share of domestic trading to a record 99%.
Euromoney March 2008
Corporate earnings forecasts might still need to fall but the near 20% collapse in global equity markets since their 2007 peaks suggests that the worst might already be almost fully priced in.
Euromoney March 2008
The UK Financial Services Authority has questioned the spread of derivatives-based trading strategies, such as 130/30, by traditional long-only managers. The increasing use of derivatives poses a "range of risks", warns the FSA.
Euromoney March 2008
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the Japanese reputation for electronic gadgetry, Japanese institutional equity investors are embracing electronic trading in a big way, according to a survey by Greenwich Associates.
Euromoney March 2008
Mid-East equity capital market volumes
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Distressed seems the right route to take.
Euromoney March 2008
New Bramdean fund looks to bring new players to alternatives.
Euromoney March 2008
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Euromoney March 2008
Volatility creates opportunities but, in the case of some strategies, high levels can be lethal. Helen Avery talks to the founder of CTA Pirates of Profit about how risks need to be fully understood.
Euromoney March 2008
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Euromoney March 2008
Nobody expects it to get any easier, especially if January’s figures for Europe and Asia are any indication of the future, says Neil Wilson.
Euromoney March 2008
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Euromoney March 2008
Amid all the bad news surrounding the world’s best-known banks, one institution can hold its head high after its latest results.
Euromoney March 2008
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Euromoney March 2008
Companies are beginning to look to their neighbours for investment flows.
Euromoney March 2008
Central and eastern Europe is by no means immune to financial woes, strong economic growth levels notwithstanding.
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Lebanon still has no president, and now its public debt has been downgraded.
Euromoney March 2008
The financial services sector in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia looks set to remain a magnet for foreign direct investment thanks to growing economic and political stability.
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
The Japanese megabanks claim there are no shocks to come on the sub-prime losses front. If true, it’s a big leap forward for transparency.
Euromoney March 2008
The UK government’s actions and intentions remain confused. It is time to end the uncertainty.
Euromoney March 2008
Tough talk by the regulators might bear fruit for the monolines.
Euromoney March 2008
Chinese banks face a potential corporate defaults crisis for the first time in five years.
Euromoney March 2008
Latin American bankers appear confident that the region can continue to avoid the worst of the US contagion.
Euromoney March 2008
Many of the delegates at an industry conference in Nevada seemed blind to the real world beyond the securitization desk.
Euromoney March 2008
Private placements are becoming an increasingly common route for emerging market companies seeking to tap global debt markets.
Euromoney March 2008
Credit Suisse’s convoluted saga is a calamity for the banking sector as a whole. People might assume that banks don’t understand the numbers they are dealing with and that the numbers that are reported are not reliable.
Euromoney March 2008
The effects of the sub-prime crisis are spreading and could cost 2.5% of world GDP. Emerging market economies will not be immune.
Euromoney March 2008
Six months into a credit crunch there are few signs of an improving outlook for non-government bond markets. It is a signal equity investors would do well to heed.
Euromoney March 2008
Marking everything that is complex down to zero, because markets are illiquid, does not seem to be a particularly equitable or sensible way of going about things. And that’s before you even consider the way the marking malaise is contributing to systemic risk.
Euromoney March 2008
Anyone who follows the travails of England’s football, cricket and rugby teams should easily have predicted Northern Rock’s troubles.
Euromoney March 2008
The Indian stock market is in free fall, but on the sub-continent that story has had to take second billing to the forthcoming Indian Premier League 20/20 cricket tournament set to take place in April.
Euromoney March 2008
Brazil is notorious for many things, caipirinhas, carnival and beautiful beaches... but in the mind of one Euromoney journalist Brazil also breeds a special type of PR who can invent some of the most original excuses for delays to meetings.
Euromoney March 2008
The internet campaign to raise €5 billion to save the career of rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel, launched on social networking site Facebook, has got off to a slow start, with only 2,095 members so far having pledged €1 each towards the cause.
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
Euromoney March 2008
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