The current market is testing relations between managers and investors to the full, says Neil Wilson.

Just weeks after RBS’s shareholders took up 95% of the rights on offer in the UK bank’s £12 billion ($24 billion) rights issue, the largest ever, investors shunned similar cash calls from UK banks HBOS and Barclays.

Nasir Afaf has joined Calyon as its global head of FX trading. Sources say he is replacing Steve Nutland; Nutland moved at the end of June from London to run Calyon’s FX operations in Asia.

It’s a year since the credit crunch began and still there is no end in sight to the bloodletting. Alex Chambers looks at the prospects for bankers facing this unprecedented downturn as traditional alternative employment avenues, such as hedge funds, struggle to pick up the slack.

Shinsei Bank has announced that it is to acquire General Electric’s Japanese consumer finance business for ¥580 billion ($5.4 billion). The deal comprises GE’s personal loans unit, Lake, as well as its mortgage loans and credit card arms, and will bring Shinsei more than 2 million new customers as it seeks to combine its consumer finance and retail operations.

Armins Rusis is joining Markit’s executive team from Morgan Stanley as vice-president and global co-head of fixed income, alongside a founding partner at Markit, Kevin Gould. Rusis worked at Morgan Stanley for 17 years and was latterly head of US credit trading and global head of securitized and structured credit trading. Prior to that he worked in Europe, until May where he was head of credit trading. He was replaced by Patrick Lynch.

Moscow-headquartered investment bank Renaissance Capital has teamed up with France’s BNP Paribas to offer investors a diversified form of structured equity exposure to the Russian market.

It’s been a ropey year so far for Pakistan’s embattled stock markets but better news is on the horizon for global investors. Over the next 12 months, the government is expected to push ahead with aggressive plans to privatize a clutch of state-run firms, as the government seeks to cut into a current account deficit that widened to $14 billion in the fiscal year to end-June 2008, from less than half that a year earlier.

China’s National Development and Reform Commission announced on July 22 that it would strengthen approval requirements for foreign capital inflow in an effort to control more speculative investments. In a note analysing the potential impact of the changes, Qu Hongbin and Ma Xiaoping, economists at HSBC, say that the major changes include requirements for all foreign investments to seek NDRC approval, stricter reviews of the credibility of foreign investment projects and "the prevention of capital inflows that are not based on real investments."

Promising "a new exchange for the new economic world order", the Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX) aims to be the Asian hub of commodities derivatives trading. The exchange, announced on July 9, will offer futures and options trading in precious metals, base metals, energy, agricultural commodities, currency pairs, carbon credits and commodity indices.

Dealers report that liquidity in the variance swaps market held up well amid recent equity market turbulence. Equity volatility might finally have matured to the point where it is an asset class in its own right. John Ferry reports.

"If you don’t fully understand an instrument, don’t buy it. If you would not buy for yourself a specific product, don’t try to sell it. If you don’t know very well your customers, don’t lend them any money. If you do all these things, you will be a better banker, my son"

When the US SEC announced in July that it would impose a 30-day ban on illegal naked shorting in 19 stocks, some hedge funds were up in arms.

The effects of the credit crunch have spread across all areas of finance, affecting even the world’s most liquid market: swaps in euros. People still want to do business, but banks need to reorder their balance sheets and regain confidence. And that could take a long time.

As the woes in western banking continue, Euromoney thought it would offer its readers something to salve their wounds as they deal with the underperformance of their financial stocks.

I hate to be the ugly fairy at the wedding but I'm starting to wonder if John Thain will turn out ot be Merrill's messiah after all.

"Putting an idiot in a suit doesn’t make him a private banker"

It has always been a big contributor to investment banking profitability – and with credit derivatives in turmoil, the market’s importance is rising again. Total Derivatives, in association with Euromoney, polled the market to find out who is the best of breed in rates.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation recently issued a statement laying the foundations for the regulation of a US covered bond market, specifically concerning the preferred treatment of bondholders in the event of an issuer default.

Investment into UK mortgage bank Bradford & Bingley by private equity firm TPG has been scrapped following a downgrade of the firm. TPG was due to invest about $350 million in B&B but had protected its agreement by including an escape clause that allowed it to withdraw if Moody’s downgraded B&B twice prior to investment. Moody’s downgraded B&B from A3 to Baa1 last month.

The strong performance of BBVA and Santander can’t mask the impact of a looming housing crash on domestic institutions.

In-house hedge funds look to have been a costly mistake for investment banks. Far better, it seems, is to take stakes in independent ones.

HBOS is struggling. That’s why its stock price is depressed and its rights issue came close to disaster.

In the new world of covered bonds, it really does matter where you come from.

The last of the traditional monoline insurance companies to maintain their triple-A rating are facing a downgrade.

Investors worry that proposed regulation will punish the European market for weaknesses in US sub-prime origination.

The market, it is said, is always right, but the performance of Icap’s share price is seemingly at odds with the company’s financial growth. Of course, Icap’s shares have been caught up with the general malaise affecting global equity valuations in general and financial stocks in particular but as the company pointed out in an interim management statement issued in mid-July, it has continued to benefit as a result of the continuing volatility in financial markets.

FXCM posts strong second-quarter revenues.

Bernardo Parnes has been named as the new chief country officer for Deutsche Bank Brazil. Parnes has more than 23 years’ banking experience. Most recently he was chief executive of Banco Bradesco’s BBI unit. Before that, he spent 14 years at Merrill Lynch. "Brazil is a key growth market for Deutsche Bank and an important part of our emerging markets business," says Dalinc Ariburnu, global head of emerging markets at the German bank.