Reaz Islam, head of Citi’s Falcon Strategies hedge funds, is leaving the bank.

The region’s importance could mean more banking officials relocating there.

Having been hit by a series of defections in recent months, Deutsche Bank has acquired a new head for its Russian business.

Following the retirement of John Fleming at Credit Suisse and ABN Amro’s Paul White, another longstanding debt syndicate head has left his role. Lorenzo Frontini, who ran European debt syndicate at Lehman Brothers for four years has moved to origination within the bank’s global finance division. Frontini is a Lehman veteran with 11 years experience, and now will run coverage for Italian financial institutions. He reports to European co-heads of global finance Philippe Dufournier and Richard Atterbury and geographically to Riccardo Banchettti, CEO of Italy.

Martin Egan is the new global head of debt capital markets at BNP Paribas. Egan maintains his role as head of primary markets where he oversees fixed income syndicate.

Why has idiosyncratic Idzik exited? In early May, it seeped out that Paul Idzik, Barclays’ chief operating officer, had decided to leave the UK bank. And for a while, all anyone wanted to discuss was the Idzik exodus.

Series of opportunistic buybacks is ruffling feathers in the loan market.

When a medical doctor with close ties to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was appointed as minister of finance many were surprised. Surapong Suebwonglee has worked hard to woo Thai people and foreign investors with tax cuts, capital markets reforms and a focus on growth. Lawrence White met him on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank meeting.

The recent burst of issuance in Spain appears to have run its course, but the news is better in Portugal.

New president Ma Ying-jeou is intent on improving relations with the People’s Republic of China, with likely benefits for business, especially in financial services. Chris Wright reports.

Despite conflicting views on the state of the economy and uncertainty caused by political unrest, banks are riding high on mortgage lending and consumer loans. There is still huge untapped potential for credit cards. High interest rates remain the fly in the ointment, however. Julian Marshall reports.

When BlackRock announced in May that it would be buying $15 billion of UBS’s sub-prime mortgages, for some market participants it signalled the bottom of the mortgage-backed securities market. But house prices are still falling. Is US real estate still too risky? Helen Avery goes doorstepping.

After a year that has been ruthless in its revelation of sub-par debt services, the Euromoney debt poll reveals which banks have managed to survive the credit crunch with their reputations, and their client bases, still intact.

The commodity price boom masks fundamental questions about the value of commodity investments in a portfolio, the choice of commodities and the most constructive use of indices. Euromoney’s debate panel grapples with the crucial issues.

If you don’t know what to buy friends who invested in Bear Stearns to cheer them up, look no further than eBay. For just $17.99 the bidding website is offering a T-shirt with the slogan: "I invested my life savings with Bear Stearns and all I have left is this lousy t-shirt." The item had received no bids by time we went to press but other interesting Bear Stearns memorabilia was faring better. Among the 24 Bear Stearns-related items up for grabs on the website is a Bear Stearns hard hat, a Bear Stearns aviator Teddy Bear, and a sealed deck of cards issued to Bear Stearns employees to mark the 50th anniversary of Ace Greenberg’s joining the firm.

Euromoney: What was the reasoning behind the latest reorganization?

"There are no second acts in American lives," wrote F Scott Fitzgerald towards the end of his own monochrome career. He can’t have been talking about Wall Street: as anyone who has tracked the career of John Meriwether will know, third, fourth and fifth acts are perfectly possible. Perhaps more careers have taken a dramatic turn in the present crisis than was the case when the hedge fund LTCM failed; for those seeking an uplifting plot twist, a stage name might come in handy. Euromoney has noticed that merely shuffling the letters in the names of some victims of the credit crisis produces plausible pseudonyms, and respectfully presents the stars of tomorrow: Enterprising readers might wish to suggest their own anagrams: Euromoney confesses to being stumped by Jonathan Chenevix-Trench, former COO of Morgan Stanley’s institutional securities business.

Most US hedge fund managers are pessimistic about the US economy this year, according to a survey by Kinetic Partners.

"I don’t think it’s a Great Depression, I don’t think it’s Armageddon but I think that it’s purely wishful thinking for people to be forecasting a sharp V-shaped recovery in the second half of the year"

It seems that life at the UK Treasury is far more relaxing since the credit crunch hit last summer. According to figures released by the Treasury, staff took in total an average of 166 days off a month because of stress-related illnesses in the first half of 2007, while in the second half of the year the figure was 106 days.

The usually laborious task of bringing a new exchange traded fund product to market in the US looks set to become a thing of the past once new SEC rules come into play.

A commodity boom masks fundamental problems in the Brazilian economy, observers argue.

A rights issue boom means investment banks have bizarrely profited from their failures.

Kuwait Projects Company (Kipco) has decided to reorganize its financial services holdings.

After the bleakest of winters, springtime in the debt capital markets was an especially joyous affair. In April and May there were record new-issue volumes in the US and a revival of the European market. That is good news for large financial institutions and the big underwriters.

Revelations on Moody’s mis-rating of CPDOs could be the most damaging yet.

Venezuela has negotiated a new loan agreement with several Japanese companies. The money is earmarked for the expansion of two oil refineries and the loans will be repaid in future oil production. This is not the first time Venezuela has relied on oil repayment – China is owed $4 billion in oil for a loan and PDVSA owes Japanese companies Mitsui & Co and Marubeni $3.5 billion in oil. Rafael Ramírez, the energy minister of Venezuela, said the money would be used to expand the El Palito and Puerto la Cruz refineries and increase their capacity to process heavy crude. Ramírez said: "Japanese companies are moving very aggressively, they want a position in Venezuela." He did not say which Japanese companies are involved in the deal but Japan is looking for ways to reduce its dependence on Middle East production. In 2007, Japanese refiners brought Venezuelan crude for the first time since the 1980s.

Brazil plans a sovereign wealth fund.

Inflation in South Africa continues to shock after reaching 10.4% on a year-on-year basis in April. The rate confounded expectations, including that of Tito Mboweni, the central bank governor, who told Euromoney, two weeks before the announcement of the April figure, that he believed it had peaked at the end of the first quarter.

Who’d be a DCM head in 2007 or 2008? These bankers would. Alex Chambers finds out what the head officials at leading banks think are the key lessons the market has learnt and what the future holds for debt capital markets.