Kuwait's central bank has announced new credit facilities for local companies.

The Private Banking and Wealth Management Survey 2009 received 1643 valid votes (1244 'part B' votes, 399 'part A' votes), representing $11.8 trillion of Assets under Management.

Beleaguered European corporates can only dream of such quick and easy access to equity capital.

The UK Treasury’s latest bank bail-out plan will fail unless it works out what bad assets are worth.

The scale of the loss at RBS plus the talk of full nationalization and the circumstances at Merrill Lynch diverted attention from Deutsche Bank. But its losses are perhaps the most disheartening of the three.

"The $1.2 million reported in the press was for the renovation of my office, two conference rooms and a reception area. The expenses were incurred over a year ago in a very different environment"

Claims of special access to the best managers and extraordinary due-diligence skills are not rooted in reality.

UBS’s chief executive was the first global bank head to tackle the impact of the credit crunch. His actions may have saved the bank. Much remains to be done. The future of the firm’s investment bank is in doubt. And so will Rohner’s own position be, if he doesn’t quickly return the bank to profit and shut the door on outflows in its wealth management franchise. Clive Horwood reports

The resolution of one Latin America banking crisis in the early 1980s could provide lessons for today’s policymakers.

“It’s the right time to go for me. I was going to go a year ago. It’s been 25 years and I’m 50 years old. Time for new blood to fight the new fight!” says Paul Hearn on announcing his retirement from BNP Paribas in January.

The huge fraud underlines the crucial role of hedge fund administrators and independent prime brokers. An SEC that’s more au fait with hedge funds would also help. Neil Wilson reports.

Do end investors, be they feeder funds or funds of hedge funds, or indeed any party offering advice on investing in hedge funds, properly understand the strategies being run? The Madoff case has thrown light on the fact that even the simplest of strategies are clearly not understood by end investors.

Dan Condon has joined Standard Chartered as e-channels product manager in Singapore. Condon was previously vice-president, sales, at FXMarketSpace. Meanwhile, sources say Jens Andersen has left his role at Morgan Stanley in New York, where he was head of Americas trading for FXEM. He is believed to be going to Caxton.

Cost savings accelerate move towards independent administrators.

Following its takeover of Merrill Lynch, some clarification has started to emerge from Bank of America about its management structure. Chris Allington and Chris Vogel are co-heads of G10 currency trading; Peter Antico is head of Americas rates and local-currency trading; Luke Halestrap is head of EMEA rates and local-currency trading; Chris Hodson is head of global rates electronic trading and market making; Mitch Nadel is head of Japan/Australia rates and currency trading; Nicolas Rabeau and Neh Thaker are co-heads of global rates and currencies exotics trading; Jin Su is head of Asia-Pacific rates and currency trading excluding Japan/Australia; and Frank Rawlins and Behnouche Mostachfi are co-heads of global FX options trading.

"Return to profitability in 2009 is our most important priority". The bank’s chief executive details his vision for a new UBS

On January 12, Bradesco announced that it had promoted Luiz Carlos Trabuco Cappi to chief executive, replacing Marcio Cypriano. Cappi previously headed the bank’s insurance unit. Cypriano will continue as chairman and chief executive of the bank until the annual shareholder meeting in March. After 10 years in the role Cypriano was not able to renew his contract because he had reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 years.

Foreign exchange prime brokers and their exchange-traded product counterparts, the full commission merchants (FCMs), will be fully aware of the complexities involved in modern risk management. To an extent, the uptake of electronic trading has made their task far easier – there are clear audit trails, and trade confirmations are, in most cases, sent out in almost real time.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is continuing its efforts to put an end to some of the sharper practices that have plagued the country’s retail foreign exchange market. On January 15, the regulator announced it had charged James Ossie of Atlanta, Georgia, and his company, CRE Capital Corporation (CRE) of Alpharetta, Georgia, with operating a Ponzi scheme. The CFTC claims that the scam sucked in more than 100 apparent clients and involved about $25 million. Neither Ossie nor CRE had ever been registered with the CFTC.

The UK Treasury is understood to be considering the establishment of a conduit-style fund that would source investment directly from institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies to fund its infrastructure investment programme. The UK government would own the conduit and take the first-loss risk in the vehicle. Management of the conduit would be outsourced to a third party – insiders suggest that one of the monoline guarantors is being considered. The conduit could be launched in the next three to six months.

The UK Debt Management Office is canvassing market opinion on the merits of conducting gilt sales via supplementary measures such as mini-tenders, syndication and even direct placement of gilts with end investors. The size of the UK Treasury’s borrowing requirement led the DMO to consult its Gilt Edged Market Makers in a process that ended on January 28. The DMO is seeking to raise the supply of long-dated and index-linked gilts, in particular. In light of the high financing requirement of £143 billion ($194 billion), £147 billion and £135 billion for the next three years from 2009/10, the government’s medium-term strategy is to skew issuance to long-dated maturities. This strategy seeks to take advantage of strong actuarially driven demand at the long end from pension and insurance funds. The last UK syndicated gilt issuance took place in September 2005 when the DMO sold a £1.25 billion 50-year linker. That was a response to the poor auction outcome of a conventional 50-year gilt in May of that year. The results of the consultation will be announced at the time of the UK budget in March.

Goodbye SLS, hello APF.

"I’m a new kind of thug with a Washington buzz ‘coz dealing debt pays better than dealing drugs." Watch the video here.

Academics at the University of Portsmouth are undertaking an unconventional study into new business methods, commissioned by transition consultants Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA).

European Commission digs its heels in over central counterparty.

"I’ve no interest in Davos. I don’t know how they keep the snow from melting with all the hot air. What has Davos ever achieved except perpetuating the belief among participants that they are so very special?"

Can this year be any worse for IPOs? 296 is the number of IPOs withdrawn or postponed in 2008; $1.1 billion is the amount raised from the seven IPOs completed in the US during the second half of 2008, with the $145 million offering by Grand Canyon Education being the only US deal to price in the fourth quarter of 2008, when global IPO revenues to bank arrangers slumped 98% compared with the fourth quarter of 2007. Bankers aren’t enthusiastic about IPO prospects for 2009 but at least the annual comparisons are going to be easier.

Sales of distressed real estate assets in Mexico could total more than $10 billion this year. “Mexico is very interesting at the moment,” says a local portfolio manager. “There are four big companies that are struggling that have big real estate portfolios in the country. Now there is an expectation that they will have to sell some of these assets.”

Bill Schwab has been appointed global head of real estate at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia). Schwab joins from JPMorgan, where he was managing director of European real estate finance.

According to Euromoney’s favourite Feng Shui queen, Master Lynn Yap, the coming 12 months will be nothing if not harrowing.