Any football supporter will tell you that the team is usually only as good as the person who runs it. The same applies to investment banking. The CEO sets the agenda for the entire firm. It is a highly pressurized role that will culminate in their removal if the team they manage fails to perform. And the performance that ultimately matters for bank CEOs is to deliver returns to shareholders.

Demand for Islamic finance products is high. At last supply is starting to meet investors’ needs. The challenge for the industry is to ensure that the market’s infrastructure develops sufficiently quickly so that more companies and entities continue to embrace Shariah-compliant techniques. And on the following pages Euromoney profiles the winners of the latest ­Islamic finance awards.

Nigeria has announced plans to clear the last of its commercial debt, taking it one step closer to entering the debt capital markets in 2007. Last year Nigeria was poised to issue its first Eurobond deal, for $1.5 billion, which was thought necessary to pay off its London Club debt. But then the government pulled the deal, realizing that the debt could be cleared from its rapidly growing international reserves. Now president Olusegun Obasanjo hopes to enter the capital markets in 2007, once his country’s remaining $912 million of London Club debt is extinguished and political uncertainties have diminished.

The Big Mac index is old hat. Who, in these health-conscious times, buys a Big Mac any more? Instead, please welcome a more pertinent yardstick for our time: the iPod index.

This year more Americans will file for bankruptcy than graduate from college or file for divorce.

Demand for mortgages and consumer loans from low-income borrowers will provide a big opportunity for private sector lenders, according to a new report by Merrill Lynch called The Merrill Lynch guide to emerging mortgage and consumer credit markets. The bank says currently government agencies provide a large chunk of this kind of finance. But in the long run demand will only be satisfied by building capital market instruments, such as residential mortgage-backed securities and mortgage covered bonds. The bank reckons Colombia has the strongest RMBS market in Latin America.

Three more former employees of struggling hedge fund Pirate Capital have joined FrontFour Capital, an event-drive fund set up by ex-Pirate Andrew Stotland. The fund launched in January and is reportedly seeded by Weston-Atlas Partners, a joint venture between London-based alternative asset management firm Atlas Capital Group and Weston Capital.

It’s good to see that the top men in the multilaterals are devoting time to looking after the interests of the man in the street and not just governments. Or so the Nigerian 419-style scamsters would like to have us believe.

Jochen Andritzky’s book demonstrates the importance of analysing CDS prices alongside bond prices in assessing the likelihood of sovereign default and expected recovery values. Felix Salmon examines the evidence.

Some investors are due to reduce holdings in favour of single-strategy peers.

Two surveys of hedge fund managers’ portfolio valuation policies have revealed a lack of standardization, highlighting a need for stricter valuation procedures, particularly when dealing with hard-to-value assets.

Babson Capital has launched a credit opportunity fund designed to exploit sales of stressed and distressed leveraged loans that have been forced by CLO triggers.

Given CMC Markets’ success story, it was hardly surprising that the company’s planned initial public offering in the summer of 2006 attracted so much press attention, especially in the UK.

Liability management can be a double-edged sword. Get it right and everyone showers you with plaudits about your relative sophistication as a borrower and how attentive you are to addressing investors’ wants and needs. Get it wrong, however, and your name is quickly mud and the world and his fund manager wife are soon griping about how naive you are and how difficult it will be for you to achieve your funding target for the year if you carry on in a such a cavalier, market-unfriendly manner.

Summary table of top banks, with quick links to more related content on euromoney.com

The UK has been eagerly awaiting the introduction of tax-free real estate investment trusts for years, so when the legislation permitting them finally took effect at the start of 2007 nine of the UK’s largest property companies were ready to make the switch.

Mexico’s exchange calls into question the point of recent liability management trades.

The region’s equity markets are beginning to outshine debt and M&A.

Banks’ predictions for 2007 are remarkably similar to those of a year ago.

Citing evidence from what he admits is a limited study, TABB Group partner Robert Iati feels that the decision of many of the leading FX banks to invest heavily in their own trading portals has left the multi-bank aggregating platforms looking vulnerable.

Ivan Ritossa, Barclays Capital’s global head of FX, has assumed responsibility for the bank’s rates business in Asia. His new remit includes fixed income, and commodity and equity-linked products, run out of the bank’s Singapore office. A Barclays spokesperson said: "Asia contains the fastest-growing economies in the world. Developing and building our business across this diverse region is fundamental to the global growth plans of the firm. Since joining the firm in 2002, Ivan has transformed the foreign exchange business into a world-class performer."

There are generally clear advance indications of ECB interest rate increases. However, the precise dimensions of change over the longer term are harder to predict, leaving market adjustments trailing.

A smash in the US, but tax advantages are not available for Europe.

According to Clontarf Capital: "The global tide of liquidity shows no sign of abating and this will mean another brutal year for short-sellers. For the past three years only auto-parts suppliers have been sure shorts and we believe that this may be a year to pause with long/short funds - at least new entrants, or those managers with little meaningful experience on the short side. After a few years of quiet launches, it could be that the hedge funds’ sibling long-only products are the ‘idea whose time has come’."

UK retailer Marks & Spencer is to partly plug the £704 million ($1.4 billion) hole in its UK defined benefit pension scheme by redeeming its 2001 Amethyst Finance sale and leaseback CMBS deal. The properties backing the CMBS have a current estimated book value of £550 million. UK supermarket group J Sainsbury exploited the value of its property portfolio in early 2006 by securitizing half of its property portfolio and injecting the proceeds into its pension fund. M&S plans to put its properties into a partnership in which the pension scheme will hold the interest. The cost of unwinding Amethyst and setting up the new partnership will be £30 million to £35 million.

Gulf institutions maintain their dominance of Euromoney’s rankings as growth continues for third successive year. Morris Helal reports.

Arne Hassel has joined the $10 billion London-based currency and alternatives manager Millennium Global Investments as managing director of the funds of hedge funds business. Hassel was previously CIO of funds of hedge funds at Coronation Fund Managers, before which he was head of hedge fund strategies at GSAM in London.

Summary table of top banks, with quick links to more related content on euromoney.com

Mexican fixed-line operator Maxcom almost defaulted on its debt a few years ago. But in December the company successfully returned to the international capital markets, proving that the appetite for Latin American high-yield credits is as strong as ever. Chloe Hayward speaks to CFO José-Antonio Solbes about the company’s turnaround.

At Euromoney’s Paris Forum held at the end of 2006, the chief executive of BNP Paribas, Baudouin Prot, outlined some of the challenges facing major financial institutions. Principal among these is the growth and globalization of the banking industry. The interview was conducted by Chris Garnett, Euromoney’s director of conferences. Read or listen to it here.