Although adoption of an exchange-like structure has been predicted for years, foreign exchange has predominantly been traded over the counter. Could a new initiative by the CME and Reuters finally force the transition through? Lee Oliver reports.

Investors have welcomed Thailand’s largest IPO for years with open arms. The problem is that those investors are in Singapore, not Bangkok. The failure to list one of the kingdom’s prize assets at home is symptomatic of much larger problems in the country. Chris Leahy reports.

Merrill Lynch has hired Tim Skeet as a covered bond product specialist reporting to Amir Hoveyda, European head of debt capital markets. He joins Merrill from ABN Amro where he was head of financial institutions origination for Germany and France. He joined the Dutch bank at the start of 2003, before that he held a senior FIG relationship banker role at Barclays Capital. Skeet is a veteran of the debt capital markets and one of the best-known faces in the covered bond sector. He started in the business some 25 years ago at Samuel Montagu.

A series of recent reforms has raised hopes that the capital markets will have a bigger role to play in Lebanon’s economic story. But is it another false dawn? James Featherstone reports.

Funds may take the chance to rebalance but don’t expect a crash.

Europe’s government bond auctions are a classic example of market failure. The department of Charlie McCreevy, the EU’s markets commissioner, knows this but can do nothing until it receives an official complaint. If banks are subsidizing the auction process to the tune of €600 million a year, as some claim, why don’t they make the call to Brussels?

Although banks have been leading securitization developments so far in Russia, the monopoly railroad infrastructure provider has come to market with the country’s first transaction backed by lease receivables. Kathryn Wells reports.

Japanese government-guaranteed issuers such as DBJ and JBIC have been among the largest issuers of debt from Japan. With reform of these agencies in the pipeline, what plans do they have for issuance as interest in the Japanese economy picks up?

Spacs increasingly interested in listing on UK's Alternative Investment Market.

Greek real estate moves into catch-up mode

Greece has lagged behind the rest of the eurozone in its use of techniques to free up value in real estate loans and assets. But banks’ needs for capital should fuel securitization, and new legislation will enable public bodies to make sale and leaseback deals. Dimitris Kontogiannis reports.

Despite brighter prospects for the Japanese economy, corporate issuers are not rushing back to the international or domestic bond markets. Chris Wright reports.

Who would hand over millions of dollars to a management group of a publicly listed company that does nothing, has no business strategy, has no assets and might never have any assets? But that’s what’s happening as more and more special purpose acquisition companies list. Why won’t the banks leading the deals talk about them?

Why the European government bond markets have failed...and what the European Union would like to do about it

Floating rate notes are typically a short-dated bank product traditionally aimed at other banks’ treasuries. Is this the start of a new trend?

KBC Alternative Investment Management has suffered redemptions in its hedge fund assets that reportedly amount to 80%. The Belgian bank says the redemptions were made predominantly in 2005 by large institutional investors that were “no longer entirely satisfied with the performance of the hedge funds they had invested in, and decided to move out of convertible arbitrage and other relative value arbitrage strategies”. It says that the alternatives business had €2 billion in assets at the end of last year.

Andy Abrahams, you’re rubbish...

US inflation fears spooked nervous markets this May, causing the biggest one-day falls in years. In the space of a week, the Nasdaq Composite Index and the FTSE 100 gave up their entire gains for the year. Both indices shed about 7%. Markets took fright at the larger-than-expected 0.6% rise in April’s US consumer prices, which also spilled over into commodities markets. Although many think the sell-off has been exaggerated, May’s Merrill Lynch’s Global Fund Manager Survey shows growing pessimism about inflation and corporate profits. The survey shows a sharp increase in the percentage of fund managers who expect a rise in core inflation, to 64% from 47% a month earlier. A net 9% of fund managers also expect corporate profits to deteriorate while a net 27% except operating margins to deteriorate. Nevertheless, half the sectors in the S&P500 have been posting double-digit earnings growth. Despite the uninspiring outlook for equities, bonds are still looking overvalued to a net 48% of respondents while equities by contrast are still looking underpriced to a net 3% of investors.

Following a two-year hiatus, Belgium settles trade with Citi.

Richard Longmore, head of EMEA FX sales, has abruptly left Merrill Lynch.

UBS has appointed Tom Fox and Matthew Koder as joint global heads of equity capital markets, replacing Lucinda Riches, who has headed the division for the past seven years.

Overvalued IPOs give cause for concern. Some bankers are becoming wary of damaging their reputation with rushed or over-valued Russian IPOs. Two banks dropped out of a deal last month and some analysts urge that caution be exercised in further IPOs.

The National Bank of Slovakia is likely to consider a 50 basis point rate increase this month as the koruna’s failure to appreciate in recent months drives inflation, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank. The Slovak Republic enjoyed an acceleration of real GDP growth to 6% in 2005, and the central bank felt confident enough to issue a target inflation rate of below 2% by 2007. But the currency’s disappointing performance has led to higher than expected inflation this year, and the strong suspicion that the NBS will buy crowns if further tightening doesn’t prevent further depreciation.

Henrik Raber has become co-head of European sales and trading at UBS. He spent three years as head of syndicate, having joined the bank in 2001 from Lehman Brothers. Meanwhile, Armin Peter and Evie Christodoulidou have joined UBS syndicate as part of an expansion into covered bonds and structured notes. Peter is now head of covered bond syndicate, following eight years at HSBC, and reports to Mark Wheatcroft. Wheatcroft will now co-head syndicate alongside Jonathan Brown.

General prosecutor to appeal not guilty verdict against Ulan Sarbanov.

Anthony DeChellis The head of UBS’s private wealth management team in the US is joining rival Credit Suisse to head its private banking operations for the Americas. Credit Suisse has made clear it intends to focus aggressively on building its wealth management offering in the US.

Venture capital in Latin America, led by Brazil, Chile and Mexico, has come a long way since 2003, when the industry raised just $417 million in funds. Last year, the figure reached $2 billion, according to the Latin American Venture Capital Association and, if Brazil can realize its potential, the figure could double by 2008. Brazilian pension funds, with about $120 billion in their portfolios, are making venture capital-linked investments for the first time ever this year, led by state oil workers pension fund Petros.

Saudi petrochemicals company Sabic will issue domestic sukuk bonds with a total value of at least SR1 billion ($267 million), according to the company’s financial vice-president, Mutlaq al-Morished. The bond should be finalized this month or next, with huge demand expected from the paper-hungry local market.

Lebanon puts itself back at the hub

Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s former prime minister, says her political coalition is committed to a programme of privatization and economic reform if a representative of her team assumes the top job in the country’s next government.