As margin lenders to the two struggling Bear Stearns hedge funds High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Master Fund and High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Master Fund scrambled to avert losses in late June, another vehicle with links to the funds was facing up to problems of its own. Everquest Financial, which was recently formed by Bear Stearns (and had filed a registration with the SEC on May 9 to list), is one of a raft of new listed permanent capital vehicles that have been investing in the equity and first-loss parts of structured credit investments and been hailed as a vital new source of liquidity in this market.

The storm clouds that were once on the horizon are now overhead.

The sheer size and influence of sovereign wealth funds is attracting attention – not all of it positive.

As some banks – and a tiny few aspirant young bankers – have realized, there’s good business to be built in the out-of-fashion traditional investment-grade debt capital markets.

In June, investors began to reject low returns on subordinated structures such as PIK toggle notes from riskier issuers. It will be tougher for sponsors to pile more debt on their already leveraged acquisitions. But public company managers aren’t free from the private equity threat.

Who is there to save the day when hedge funds have a blow-up? Why, it’s other hedge funds, which can make a profit clearing up the mess.

A basket approach to pricing currencies could help curb Gulf inflation.

As the managers of the two Bear Stearns high-grade hedge funds that have attracted such unwelcome publicity over the past month squirm in the spotlight, they must be wondering where they went wrong.

Oil firms Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips have pulled out of Venezuela following president Hugo Chávez’s latest round of nationalizations, in which he proposed huge increases in state participation in projects run by the two US companies and four others.

Iceland’s Straumur-Burdarás investment bank has extended its international reach to central and eastern Europe with the acquisition of a 50% stake in Wood & Company, the Prague investment banking boutique house, for an undisclosed sum. Reykjavik-headquartered Straumur has an option to increase its holding to 100% no later than early 2011.

The ability to hold a tune may not be top of the list of talents required to succeed in the cut-throat structured finance industry – but that could all be set to change. Not many sectors of the capital markets industry can boast their very own band but the ABS market can: the painfully entitled D’Leverage.

June marks the beginning of the hurricane season in the Caribbean, and every year there’s a chance that any given island will suffer devastating losses to infrastructure, property and life.

Traders hoping that an uptick in volatility is here to stay should be careful what they wish for.

UniCredit stole a march on its banking rivals in late June with the signing of an agreement to buy at least 85% of Kazakhstan’s fifth-largest financial services provider, ATF Bank. The roughly $2.2 billion transaction will catapult the Italian bank to the top of the foreign bank pile in the oil-rich central Asian republic, with UniCredit leapfrogging such rivals as Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and ING, which all have long-established operations in the country.

Wall Street investment bankers were agog at the news. Could it really be that Jimmy Quigley, debt capital markets legend and icon of Merrill Lynch’s dominance of the primary bond markets in the 1990s, had become an accountant?

William Cumming, former European head of Citi’s global special situations group (GSSG), is on the move again. He has quit Citi for rival RBS, joining the UK bank’s private equity division in New York. Cumming moved to Citi’s GSSM just over a year ago in April 2006. Before that he had been co-head of the bank’s European securitization business with David Basra since 2004. In his new role Cumming will be working alongside Lindsay McMurray, who rejoined RBS in October 2005 after quitting the bank in April 2004 to join Drawbridge Capital, sister company of Fortress Investments. During her time away from RBS she also spent a few months at Merrill Lynch.

"Never invest unless there is blood on the streets," runs the maxim from Jacob Rothschild that adorns the cover of the sales presentation from First Persian Equity Fund. Investors in the €300 million three-year closed fund, launched on June 15 and closing at the end of July, will presumably have scented blood on the fledgling Tehran Stock Exchange where years of political turmoil have kept valuations low. Volumes on the TSE have more than doubled in the past three months, while the forecast P/E ratio of five for 2007 is less than half that of Iran’s neighbours.

The buzz surrounding the launch of the new Q-WIXX CDS trading platform suggests that it is one of the most eagerly awaited, and supported, product launches in years.

WHAT’S WANTED is quality of products and services, competitive prices, social responsibility and a deep commitment to the environment and ethics – Brazil’s high flyers are a picky lot when they opt for a bank, surveys find. One bank, though, fits the bill better than any other: Banco Itaú. Brazil’s biggest private sector bank delivers not just on these eclectic areas but also in income growth, strong profits and shareholder value for investors. It is the leader in its class not just in Brazil, but a benchmark for all banks in Latin America. Its achievements are recognised by Euromoney’s award for best bank in Latin America. Itaú’s philosophy of listening to the market and giving it the products and services it wants, together with keeping a tight lid on costs, is behind the bank’s ability to produce this balance. Its core philosophy is market-led expansion strategies, not grandiose, management-driven plans. Adaptability, an ability to spot good, organic commercial opportunities, together with a knack for buying and integrating companies flows from that market-driven mind-set. Speed helps, particularly in a market where lumbering government-owned banks are still leading players.

Rob Lichten has left his role as global head of FX sales and trading at JPMorgan to take what the bank described as a long sabbatical. His decision came after the bank decided to merge its G10 FX and rates businesses and combine all its emerging markets into its wider EM platform. The bank later announced that Chris Willcox and Matt Zames would co-head global rates and currency trading, excluding Asia ex-Japan.