The market has coped well with debut deals from Sweden, the UK, Norway and Portugal; more are imminent.

Regulators hope to repeat their success in reforming practices in the credit derivatives market.

Spotted on hedge fund website Albourne Village’s ordinarily sensible and informative Residents’ Questions Board:

Despite reasonably supportive market conditions, a record level of M&A, and confident predictions from investment bankers, the volume of new convertibles issuance in Europe over the past four months has dropped to a trickle.

In October, two rating agencies struck down Italy’s credit ratings: Fitch lowered the republic’s long-term debt rating to AA–; Standard & Poor’s now has it at a lowly A+.

91% the increase in real estate/property sector IPOs year to date over the same period last year. Global IPOs in the sector have raised $21 billion so far, already the highest ever yearly volume, according to Dealogic.

A survey by the Bank of New York and Casey, Quirk and Associates shows that, while hedge funds may be receiving criticism from some governmental bodies, institutional investors are quite content with them. Only 3% of the 101 institutional investors surveyed said that their hedge fund programme had underperformed their expectations. Seventy-two percent said that their hedge fund had performed within 1% of their target expectations, and 25% claimed it had exceeded their return target by 1% or more.

“We’ve got samurais, kangaroos and bulldogs – now what we really need is a name for all these bonds coming out of Kazakhstan...”

European issuers tapping the US capital market are increasingly using the extendible note market. They are driven by a need for liquid markets and relatively low appetite for the regulatory complications involved with 144a SEC registration

In two new reports, TowerGroup makes the easy prediction that daily volumes in FX will soon surpass $3 trillion. But making sense of whether the market will consolidate has proved harder to predict for the consultancy firm.

It’s easy to see why Brian Hunter of Amaranth notoriety – and so many others – were caught long of natural gas. The prices of natural gas have risen dramatically since 2000. But how much of that increase has been due to underlying supply and demand?

NYSE will keep the floor alive having introduced electronic trading; critics say floor traders will soon be swamped.

Washington Mutual has broken new ground in several areas during the past year. Not least as the first American issuer of a covered bond. However, it made a substantial impact with its hybrid issuance too. WaMu’s treasurer, Robert Williams, explains his bank’s financing strategy to Alex Chambers.

The price that Macquarie was prepared to pay for Thames Water graphically illustrates the impact that infrastructure funds are having on this sector.

Strange market conditions prevail as companies face investors that are spoilt for choice and hedge funds that are increasingly cautious.

“Another pandemic or a large event risk such as a full-scale ground war, or various nuclear bombs exploding in large cities in any of the three countries would cause a loss for the noteholders”

Euronext.liffe makes an attempt to regain a foothold in derivative futures trading at the long end of the European bond curve this month when it launches a new range of bond futures based on the whole eurozone and the largest eurozone countries – Germany, France and Italy.

Fitch Ratings has launched a wholly owned subsidiary devoted to the credit derivatives sector.

Model can help to attract new investors to asset class.

With falling returns for hedge funds, it looks as if a trend might be developing for their employees to return to less risky, better remunerated roles in investment banks.

Technological developments in multilateral trading facilities look set to be much more significant than link-ups between private monopoly exchanges.

After the defection of three of its key FX staff to Merrill Lynch, Dresdner Kleinwort has acted quickly to try to instil some stability into the business unit.

Freddie Mac withdraws liquidity from the euro market.

Electronic trading of Japanese government bonds will account for half of the inter-dealer market by the end of 2006, according to estimates in a report published by research firm Celent.

Investment banks in Japan are preparing to compete for a share of the lucrative market for corporate hybrid capital issuance that they hope will develop following retailer Aeon’s pioneering 50-year security.

MDM deal heralds new swap technology.

The central banks of Argentina and Brazil are putting together a proposal that will ease trade payments between importers and exporters in the two countries.

Chávez says that he might try to seize four companies operating in Venezuela owned in part by Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Total and Statoil.

Euromoney’s inaugural debt trading poll gives unprecedented insights into the increasingly complex derivatives-led world of debt trading.

Bolivia signed a deal last month worth $17 billion that is set to triple its sale of natural gas to Argentina. Under a new contract, Bolivia will increase exports to Argentina from the current maximum of 7.7 million cubic metres a day to 27.7 million cubic metres a day over a 20-year period beginning in 2010.