Model can help to attract new investors to asset class.

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

But are the banks really supporting the programme?

Created in 1961 to supplement the pensions of military personnel, Turkish pension fund Oyak has traditionally delivered returns by holding majority stakes in Turkish companies. Profiting from the economy’s strong growth rates, the addition of a fixed-income portfolio has enabled the fund to ride the volatility of the market. Florian Neuhof reports.

Private equity in the Gulf is developing fast but investors need to seek out experienced firms.

The City of Moscow’s Sergei Pakhomov hopes that full rouble convertibility will offer a way around restrictive legislation that governs municipal issuance in Russia.

As the unremittingly positive attitude of investors and analysts towards Vietnam just seems to get even more positive, capital raising for new fund launches is rising fast.

There are signs that liquidity-generated inflation is spreading from financial bubbles into the output economy.

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

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.

At the end of September Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil and gas company, completed dollar and yen issues within days of each other – its first such deals in two years. CFO Almir Barbassa talks to Chloe Hayward about why the company has suddenly become so active again.

Oman’s Blue City Investments securitization packages a series of unusual risks for ABS investors.

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

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

At a meeting on global real estate last month, the speakers concluded that Latin America was the next investment opportunity, with Mexico at the forefront. Speakers also named Chile, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina as countries to watch. Real estate in Mexico, which has traditionally been driven by Americans, is now starting to see local and other foreign investment.

Tata Steel’s bid for Corus is at the vanguard of corporate India buying cross-border assets.

London-based buyout firm Doughty Hanson’s decision to pull its planned €1 billion IPO on Euronext in October suggests there’s not much retail or high-net-worth demand for private equity when some commentators are already calling the top of the market. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts managed to raise $5 billion through its Euronext IPO earlier this year but Apollo subsequently struggled to raise $2 billion and both firms’ shares have been underwater since. At the beginning of October, KKR was trading at a 16% discount.

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+.

Banks jostle for league table positions as volumes show no sign of letting up.

An inaugural Asia Pacific wealth management survey from Merrill Lynch and Capgemini highlights the growing concentration of the region’s wealth in the hands of the already rich, deemed high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs).

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.

A huge influx of liquidity has made the collateralized loan obligation almost standard fare for Europe’s institutional investors. But as they snap up CLO equity and new credit opportunity funds, they need to choose carefully.

Longer-term investments can antagonize investors with shorter-term views. Ritchie Capital looks to have found a way to defuse the conflict.

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.

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.

Malaysia’s government-linked companies are at a crossroads. All are embarking on reform but are they moving quickly enough? Sudip Roy reports from Kuala Lumpur.

Ben Shoval and his partners have found a lucrative real estate niche: early stage, short-term funding for sound, non-speculative developers. Helen Avery reports.

Asia’s property market is growing fast as it moves onto global investors’ horizons. Reits are in the vanguard of that development and are evolving rapidly. Those changes might yet pose challenges for investors. Chris Leahy reports.

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.

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