Bloomberg is beefing up its fixed-income trading capability for the first time in years. This could pose a threat to existing bond-trading platforms. But rivals hope Bloomberg's efforts are just too late to wipe them out.

Diego Wauters, chairman and CEO of Coriolis Capital, was in hospital having a foot operation that was going to leave him wheelchair bound for three months when the company began setting up in its new offices.

Serbian debt is undergoing something of a rally. The restructuring of the country's $2.4 billion in London Club debt seems finally to be gathering momentum, and analysts are calling it the next big CEE convergence trade. But are they getting over-excited? The Serbian minister of finance thinks so.

After 11 years at Mackay Shields, Steven Tananbaum concluded that there was room for a new player in the limited field of top-quality high-yield asset management. The result was Golden Tree Asset Management.

BackTrack Reports' office might bring to mind Philip Marlowe's but the founders of the background check firm, a specialist in hedge funds, reckon the methods of investigative journalists serve its clients better than private-eye or police approaches.

Spain's banking market is Europe's most attractive, and theoretically at least there's still room for more consolidation. Spanish bankers, though, reckon potential targets are not in a rush to give up their independence. But then they might overcome their hesitancy if the price is right.

Anatoly Chubais, CEO of energy company RAO UES, is planning a return to politics in the forthcoming Duma elections in Russia. As Boris Yeltsin's deputy prime minister in the 1990s, Chubais was responsible for many of the government's most controversial policies.