Last month Euromoney wrote about how the valuations service sector was heating up. Financial data provider Markit subsequently announced a new multi-dealer valuations platform. Chief executive Lance Uggla explains to Alex Chambers how the firm is broadening its offerings from credit to OTC equities.

We are engulfed in a tornado of gloom. Wall Street titans and employees alike have seen their share options decimated, pension pots plummet and everyone feels insecure about job security. I’m hearing that investment banks need to cut 20% of their employees to accommodate lower profitability.

Accusations of sharp practice are flying as the loan market struggles to deal with its problems.

The highly respected Gavin Wells has left Citi after a 14-year stint at the bank. Wells originally joined as part of the bank’s experiment of recruiting former British army officers; he successfully marched through the ranks to ultimately head the bank’s e-commerce trading force. Following Wells’s decision to stand down, Citi has decided to use its existing forces and deploy them in more distinctly divided specialist areas.

First Avenue Partners, a hedge fund advisory firm based in New York and London, is raising money for a new multi-strategy fund of hedge funds investment vehicle that will focus on Brazilian managers. The fund, which will be managed by Brazilian investment boutique Arsenal Investimentos, plans to raise $300 million.

Even given its tumultuous history, the past few months have been especially volatile in Pakistan, highlighted by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. From a financial perspective, the country faces several problems, in particular rising inflation. Shamshad Akhtar, governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, tells Sudip Roy why, despite this, she is confident about the nation’s medium-term prospects.

If Japan’s property bubble has already expanded and popped, China’s might be close to bursting.

Banco Santander in Brazil has named Banco Real chairman Fabio Barbosa as the new head of the Spanish bank’s businesses in Brazil. Barbosa will take up this new role when Banco Real is legally separated from ABN Amro. Gabriel Jaramillo, the current country head of Santander in Brazil, will "provide advice and support to the office of the chairman of Santander". Jaramillo’s post will be filled temporarily by Jose Paiva until Barbosa takes over the combined operations.

Far from solving BAA’s financial problems, the CAA’s regulatory review will make life for it even worse.

With the public markets all but closed, issuers have turned to private and structured products to fulfil their requirements. Those who have maintained the best relationships with their investors and dealers have proved best able to ride out the turmoil, printing deals at half their CDS levels or better. Infrequent borrowers and those who have taken cheap funding for granted are in for a shock.

"It is an inauspicious year because the rat year brings about slower world economies where unemployment, money matters and environment matters would be the key issues. There would be plenty of natural disasters/diseases which could affect the world."

Brian Stevenson is the head of the new global transaction services division at RBS, following its acquisition of ABN Amro’s business. In his first interview since he took the job, he talks to Laurence Neville about separation, integration and what the future holds.

Deutsche Bank’s global head of equity and derivatives trading, Noreddine Sebti, is packing his bags and ditching the Big Apple for Hong Kong, in a move that the bank says reflects Deutsche’s increasing focus on the Asia-Pacific region, which it expects to overtake Europe in terms of equity trading this year.

Rapid growth can mean rising inflation, as Vietnam is discovering.

Much is made of Ben Bernanke’s academic work on the Great Depression. However, the Fed chairman seems to making policy with one eye on the recent Japanese debt deflation cycle.

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.

The covered bond market has not behaved in the way investors had been led to believe it would. It’s time to realize that covered bonds are not the golden child of the bond family.

If it’s a chilly wintry day in London, Ratan Tata must be in town buying classic-but-hoary old UK brands. In 2007, the Indian industrialist made headlines after overpaying (as Tata himself admitted) to snap up Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus for $12.9 billion. At the time, a banker involved with the deal remembered with a grimace the awful steel assets up for sale on the British side of Corus, noting that they were the worst he’d seen in a developed country in "a long, long time". Never mind: Mumbai-listed Tata Steel, the division that completed the Corus acquisition on January 31 2007 with the aid of a $2.66 billion bridge loan and $6.14 billion-worth of debt, saw its stock more than double in value in 2007 – although it has fallen back by a third this year, in line with the rest of the market.

The European Central Bank’s term repo window shows no signs of diminished popularity. With the European mortgage-backed market firmly shut, the central bank has continued to back securitization technology and extend liquidity for triple A-rated securities issued by Europe’s banks.

Even though spreads for most foreign exchange products are often so thin that they barely exist, the use of transaction cost analysis (TCA) to measure execution is on the increase.

The Dubai Multi Commodity Centre Authority, which is owned by the Dubai government, is buying a 4.99% stake in Shariah Capital. The two companies are also creating a joint-venture investment company that will develop Shariah-compliant commodity-linked investment products.

Shinsei Bank is to sell the headquarters building it inherited from its previous incarnation, Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, in order to avoid booking a net loss for a second consecutive fiscal year. The ¥118 billion ($1.18 billion) sale is to a real estate fund managed by Morgan Stanley, and will help to offset the total of ¥32.5 billion of sub-prime related losses announced by the bank so far. The bank says it will rent the space for the next three years while it searches for a more cost-efficient base. This continues a recent trend of banks selling their Tokyo headquarters, with Resona announcing on March 11 that it is seeking a buyer for its Otemachi base. Meanwhile market participants wonder what Morgan Stanley knows about Tokyo property that they don’t: in addition to its participation in the Shinsei deal, the US bank bought Citi’s Shinagawa HQ in February for just over $1 billion.

Alternative investments round up: Who’s smiling?

Foreign exchange settlement system CLS has established a new record for the value of transactions processed in one day, soaring through the $10 trillion ceiling.

Despite avoiding the worst effects of the global credit crunch, Kazakh banks will need to undertake reforms in the coming months if they are to regain trust and confidence, concludes Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Ekaterina Trofimova. She says: "The Kazakh banking system has reached a decisive point in its development, with the continuing turbulence highlighting the need for a deep transformation of business practices, strategies and regulation."

Investors in equity-linked structured notes are becoming increasingly concerned about counterparty credit risk, and are therefore becoming more discerning when it comes to choosing which institutions to buy their products from, report dealers.

March 7

Despite the volume of high-profile mergers and acquisitions between exchanges, the number of trading venues in the US is an astonishing 55 and rising. According to industry consultant Larry Tabb: "The US financial markets are not just in flux; they are in full-out, no holds-barred, free-for-all radical change." Moreover, it is a trend that he believes is likely to be exported.

Unless Japan gets more involved in international capital markets, perhaps through a sovereign wealth fund, it is likely to become increasingly irrelevant in Asian finance.

As financial stress grows, economies weaken and companies see risks looming at every turn, insurers offer themselves up as strategic risk advisers. They must prove their risk engineering skills, upgrade systems, overhaul archaic industry practices and adapt to capital market investors seeking insurance exposure. Euromoney polls 255 leading corporations to fi nd which insurers and brokers are doing the best job.