Restrictions hindering participation by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in India's burgeoning equity derivatives market are slowly being lifted. The Indian finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram announced in his budget speech in late February that FIIs can offer stocks instead of cash as collateral to trade in equity derivatives. That permits FIIs to put their holdings of Indian stock, worth over Rs34 billion ($777 million) in total, to use, and allows them to participate in a bigger way in the derivatives market. Putting up stocks instead of cash as collateral will help reduce the cost of arbitrage between the cash and futures markets, an area where foreign institutional investors are particularly active, says Mahesh Bhagwat, vice president at ICICI Securities, a large brokerage. Those opportunities for arbitrage have been profitable over the past year when futures have generally traded at a premium to prices in the cash market, he points out. "Even though prices of stocks FIIs hold have doubled over the last year, putting them in profit in the cash market, they must pay higher cash margins on their positions in the futures market," Bhagwat explains.

This is the league table you didn't want to come top of. Euromoney's dedicated team of researchers checks the validity of every vote in our polls. It's what helps make annual fixtures such as the credit research survey the benchmark poll for each industry.

The US government should reinstate new issuance of the 30-year bond, and sell up to $20 billion by year end. So says Mustafa Chowdhury, head of US rates strategy for Deutsche Bank. "If they weren't to start until the third or fourth quarter this year, $10 billion would be a decent number," he says. Chowdhury is not alone in wanting to see a return of the 30-year bond, issuance of which was suspended in 2001. Strategists and economists across the US have been arguing in favour of it recently, and whether and when the government might return to the 30-year is a standard question whenever administration officials appear at Bond Market Association events. Joshua Bolten, head of the Office of Management and Budget, was most recently on the receiving end at such an event in February. He sidestepped it, stating it wasn't his department.

Modular rather than maintenance seems to be the new buzzword as the key to success in a rapidly changing environment for credit research. But every investment bank seems to have a different view about the implications for analysts. To publish or not to publish? Cross asset or sectoral? Client facing or in house? Whatever the decision, only the best analysts will survive.

With some of the largest and most liquid capital markets in Asia Pacific and yield-hungry local asset managers, Australia would seem a natural port of call for Asian companies. Yet until structural reforms are made and local perceptions about Asian risk change, the expectations gap will not be bridged. Australia will end up the loser.

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Residents and visitors to New York will try to sue the city for just about anything. Civil litigation against the City of New York has increased by 2,500% since 1978 and its tort division handles over 90,000 cases a year. The latest figures, for 2003, show this cost the city's taxpayers $500 million.

Americans are poor exporters. A falling dollar can't change that. What with globalization, low-cost rivals and the downplaying of the greenback, a collapse rather than an adjustment looks likely.

With the Russian state rolling back the liberalization of the economy – notably in its dealings with oil company Yukos – investment banks are faced with a dilemma. They must sometimes decide between defending the rights of private investors and forging and maintaining relations with the Kremlin in the hope of attracting current and future business. It's a tough choice.

Oracle is at it again. In early March, just weeks after concluding its takeover of PeopleSoft, one of the most acrimonious, and at times personal, hostile takeovers in years, the enterprise software company jumped back on the hostile acquisition trail.

Growing liquidity derived from high oil prices, less restrictive regulation, a drive to privatization and a reduction in investment abroad have driven the Saudi Arabian stock market to new heights

The tussle between liberals and dirigiste conservatives in Russia's ruling circles shows no signs of subsiding. Analysts are uncertain of the meaning of it all. The dismemberment of Yukos was a clear manifestation of the conservative line but there are indications that liberal intransigence is winning back ground

Having recorded a loss of €1.5 billion in 2001 and been bought out by Permira in 2003, pay-TV operator Premiere has now completed the most successful IPO of a Germany company since 2000

Bob Diamond is on the verge of a sporting hat trick. The Barclays Capital CEO's run of success started last October when the Boston Red Sox beat the infamous Curse of the Bambino to win baseball's World Series. They had last won in 1918.

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Henry Blodget ponders what the lessons of the 1990s have taught us and concludes that there's nothing like hindsight to blind us to the truth

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English is well on its way to becoming the global language. According to one estimate, around 350 million people are native English speakers, with another 400 million speaking English as a second or foreign language.

It is hard to see how Paul Wolfowitz will be able to run the World Bank, at least in his first couple of years there. His only supporters seem to be people who think the Bank is in need of a radical shake-up. That, however, is the last thing the Bank needs: it is only now recovering from years of turmoil at the beginning of the tenure of Wolfowitz's predecessor, James Wolfensohn. But Wolfowitz comes from a US administration (where he is currently deputy secretary of defence) that has been very unhappy with the Bank, and he has surely been charged with changing things.

Some 90% of trading of spot currencies in the interbank FX market is expected to be done electronically by 2007, up from today's level of 60%, according to new research. Boston-based research and consultancy firm Celent Communications also predicts that dealer-to-client volumes will be 70% electronically traded over the same period, up from 43% now. The inter-dealer spot market, which trades $301 billion a day, has historically had a higher adoption rate of electronic trading than the dealer-to-client market.

Can Egypt's reformist government meet its promises to reduce the state's economic role while attracting more FDI?

A study of CEO pay and skill by professors Robert Daines, Vinay Nair and Lewis Kornhauser, of Stanford University, the Wharton School and New York University, respectively, has found little evidence of high skill among CEOs at big firms. Moreover the research also found evidence that pay and skill are negatively related in the performance of big firms in industries constrained by business environment factors.

Remember Paul O'Neill, president George W's first treasury secretary? He's been quiet for the last few months, after the furore died down about his collaboration with journalist and author Ron Suskind for the book The Price of Loyalty.

Paul Wolfowitz's controversial nomination as World Bank president is overshadowing valedictory verdicts on James Wolfensohn's 10 years in the role.

Germany's Pfandbrief issuers are getting ready for the new law that comes into effect in July. Now they, potential new issuers and an increasingly diverse investor base are focusing on the opportunities that the revised regulatory regime may provide. Will the new legislation help to hasten the internationalisation of the asset class?

The successful restructuring of energy company Medco shows what can be achieved in the byzantine and often murky world of Indonesian restructurings. With creditors all paid out and the family back in control, plans are afoot for a rapid expansion and an overseas listing.

Manipulation of the stock prices of small, start-up companies can manifest itself in several ways. Genuine start-up companies are in need of investment, and illegal naked shorters can use their vulnerability and inexperience as a means of making money. Wes Christian, partner with law firm Christian, Smith & Jewell, says there tends to be two or three ways that these investors will loan a company money, and simultaneously short them out of existence using complicated financial arrangements – so-called toxic funding, or 'death-spiral financing'.

Bear Stearns's young UK subprime lender has entered the RMBS market using an innovative offering circular that should position it well for future deals.

Now enjoying the third year of a recovery that is clearing away the debris of the 2001 crisis, Turkey's bankers are hoping soon to complete the final important clean-up operation: resolving the on-again, off-again fate of the fourth-largest private bank, Yapi Kredi.

Thousands of US stocks are being traded on a little-known Berlin exchange, without the knowledge of many of the companies involved. Have the naked short sellers exported their practice overseas?