Published in conjunction with: Banco Santander Totta -- Espírito Santo Investment -- Caixa - Banco de Investimento

2010 ranking of real estate advisors and consultants, developer services, banks, investment managers and property managers.

"There may well be some market participants who want us to not comply with the statute, they may want to interpret it softly. But Congress really did say there’s got to be comprehensive regulation of the dealers, there’s got to be a mandate for clearing and there is a requirement for trading and real-time reporting"

Budding entrepreneurs wanting to make the really big bucks should look at the rewards for failure that persist despite the financial turmoil of recent years.

"The worst thing is the uncertainty. Just give us a set of rules and then we’ll figure out how to work round them... I mean work with them"

While God’s banker Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’s chief executive, likes to do much of his work at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, the financial historian Niall Ferguson chose to publicize his latest work, a biography of Siegmund Warburg, at St Paul’s Cathedral in London last month, with an accompanying and passionate sermon on the morality of finance. One fashionably late Euromoney correspondent arrived five minutes after the address had begun, to find standing room only, as Ferguson stood upon a specially constructed pulpit evangelizing about the need for a new order in the world of finance.

With some $1.4 trillion of commercial real estate loan maturities looming over the next four years and traditional funding markets still in intensive care, CRE recovery is entering a critical phase in the US and Europe. However, cash-rich domestic buyers are already driving regional growth in Asia and are cherry-picking top assets in the west. Joti Mangat reports.

Corporate responses to the financial crisis are forcing banks with liquidity management services to come up with new tools and techniques. Clients are demanding more visibility, control and optimization.

Asia’s property markets avoided the worst of the global financial crisis and Chinese buyers are leading the way in global commercial real estate turnover, even as the country’s domestic property market struggles with the fallout from overheating. Joti Mangat reports.

Turkey’s relatively strong economic performance looks set to be sustained if fiscal self-discipline and sound banking practices are maintained. Euromoney’s roundtable examines the factors in the country’s favour and potential weaknesses.

A CNBC report describes the trend in mainland China of hiring "fake executives": westerners recruited by Chinese companies to lend an image of cosmopolitan internationalism

The UK stopped jailing debtors in 1869 but a subsidiary of UK bank HSBC defends the survival of the practice in the UAE, according to local weekly Arabian Business.

Capital markets development in the Caribbean has hit the buffers because of the limited size of individual economies. More inter-state cooperation and integration is a vital precondition of growth. Jason Mitchell reports.

In the gripping document The history and development of the Deutsche Bank logo, available on the company’s website to all interested readers, an unnamed author details the various icons the German bank has used down the ages. Replacing the now-ominous imperial eagle of the early 1900s and the bland ‘DB in an oval’ of the mid-20th century, the current ‘slash in a square’ was adopted in 1974. The slash apparently stands for growth, while "the square-shaped frame can be interpreted as a sign of security". The logo, we are told, was the design of a now deceased graphic artist from Stuttgart named Anton Stankowski; he is said to have submitted the image alongside seven other competitors in 1972. This is as convenient a creation myth as any, but intrepid research in the jungles of Cambodia by Euromoney has revealed the possibility of a far more sinister origin for the logo. We found this archway, with its uncanny resemblance to the DB logo, in the ruins of the East Mebon temple near to Angkor Wat.

Ambitious plans for international financial centres in the Gulf states of Dubai, Qatar and Bahrain that would be hubs for financial services in a broadly defined region are still a long way off being fulfilled. Dominic Dudley looks at the likely outcomes.

Against the odds the sector has weathered the economic downturn and is now poised to show healthy growth as the country emerges from recession. Guy Norton reports.

When their traditional German investor base was blown away by the financial crisis, sovereign funding officials in central Europe had to adjust to a world of hefty spreads and hard work. Two years on, their efforts are paying handsome dividends. Lucy Fitzgeorge-Parker reports.

Projects such as an elite management school, a Moscow technology park, a nanotechnology fund and plans to turn Moscow into a global financial centre are all designed to move Russia away from dependence on energy and metals productions. How successful will they be? Elliot Wilson reports.

The country’s banking reforms are going well and attracting regional interest. But western banking groups remain largely excluded because of Bush-era sanctions. Are they missing out on an incipient boom market? Nick Lord reports from Damascus.

Like Standard Bank, its better-known rival, South Africa’s FirstRand has seen the advantages of links with the burgeoning Asian markets, notably through a tie-up with Chinese bank CCB and a direct presence in India. Nick Kochan reports.

Brazilian structured credit based on such underlyings as consumer loans, auto finance and trade receivables is in rude health but the underdeveloped RMBS and CMBS market will only take off with greater supply. Even then, investors may be wary of buying it. Rob Dwyer reports from São Paulo.

The country’s banking system breezed through the global financial crisis with an ease few thought possible. Its economy is likely to boom as a trading hub for the region. It is no wonder banks such as HSBC are looking to increase their presence. Nick Lord reports from Istanbul.

Governor Sheikh Salem Al Sabah is leading efforts to deal with the chaos left from years of property and stock speculation. But as Dominic O’Neill asks at the central bank’s office in Kuwait, is the clean-up anywhere near complete? Is structural change possible?

Across Africa, French leadership in banking is being replaced as Moroccan banks expand south of their borders, reviving historical political influences and ancient trade routes. Are these dreams sustainable or are they adventures heading towards disaster? Dominic O’Neill reports from Casablanca.

HSBC’s purchase of South Africa’s Nedbank will offer big advantages for both partners. HSBC will gain it first substantive presence in Africa – and not just South Africa – and Nedbank will draw on HSBC’s global links and know-how. Nick Kochan reports.

Managers at Austrian bank RZB and its central and eastern European subsidiary, Raiffeisen International, hope that a merger between the two will help maintain its position as a market leader in the region. Sudip Roy talks to Herbert Stepic, who will lead the newly merged entity.

With a new administration making the right noises about reform, the banks cleaning up their balance sheets and abundant capital market liquidity, the mood in Manila is optimistic. Locals feel their country might get its due, but it won’t be easy to effect lasting change. Lawrence White reports.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has become one of the top-five investment banks in Latin America in just two years. There are plans to double revenues over the next three. In its new role as a universal bank, will BAML be able to compete with the international banking incumbents? Helen Avery reports.

Mexico’s investment banking climate is improving after some big M&A deals and the end of an almost two-year drought in IPO transactions. Jason Mitchell reports from Mexico City.

The bank’s chief executive says it has little interest in risky opportunities in foreign emerging markets when it is based in the world’s strongest emerging market – one it fully understands. Rob Dwyer reports.

In August 2009 the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria announced that he was removing the top management of five leading Nigerian banks as part of a bailout package. More bosses were subsequently thrown out. About 200 bankers and investors are now facing criminal investigations. Here for the first time, Sanusi explains to Nick Kochan why he intervened.

Government officials hope that international investors will look afresh at Indonesia. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s government made history with its re-election. It is using a strong popular mandate to tackle corruption and bureaucratic shortcomings head-on. Eric Ellis reports from Jakarta.

Ever since the sub-prime crisis, global banks have been looking for the big idea that will replace revenues lost with the demise of the structured-finance era. Now they think they’ve found it. Emerging market to emerging market business, they believe, will drive growth for years to come. Where government deals lead, so the private sector and the banking industry will follow. It’s not just about headline M&A deals; it’s every part of a bank’s business, from selling equity to trading bonds. Perhaps the toughest task of all will be to position their own banks’ infrastructure to take full advantage of the new flows that bypass the traditional hubs of global finance. In this brave new world, as Sudip Roy reports, bankers are just as likely to shuttle between Beijing, Moscow and São Paulo as they are from New York to London and Tokyo.

China’s hugely successful growth-at-all-costs economic strategy is reaching crisis point. The increase in domestic consumption that would help sustain high growth, is laggardly and its political leaders fight shy of pursuing the radical policies that would boost it. Elliot Wilson reports.

Eleven banks gathered in Agricultural Bank of China’s offices in early April to plan in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion how to complete an extremely difficult task. The challenge: to sell to investors what was thought of as China’s weakest big bank, to a timetable calling for unprecedented swiftness, against a backdrop of worsening global market conditions. Lawrence White reports from Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai on the story of the world’s biggest-ever IPO.

US states and cities are facing a crisis. Budget shortfalls from declining tax revenues and increasing debt are becoming insurmountable. A swift end to the recession cannot be relied upon to solve their problems. Unless tough decisions are made, and soon, the crisis facing the states could make the ClubMed meltdown seem like a vacation. Helen Avery reports.

The DBS chief executive is developing a more focused take on his bank’s traditional pan-Asian aspirations. Singapore, India and Greater China are the key growth points, concentrating on commercial banking (especially for SMEs) and wealth management. Chris Wright reports.

Renaissance Capital’s ambition is to become the world’s pre-eminent emerging markets investment bank. The economic ties that link Asia, Africa and all the states of the former Soviet Union are a new focus. Can its clarity of purpose help RenCap usurp its global competitors? Elliot Wilson reports.

The flotation of two subsidiaries of the Malaysian state oil company Petronas raises hopes that the parent company may list. This would help the profile of Malaysia’s equity market but could also weaken Petronas’s role as the source of almost half of state revenues. Chris Wright reports.

At the end of October, the winner of the prestigious Financial Times/Goldman Sachs business book of the year award will be announced at a swanky dinner in New York.

Market satisfaction with renewed US quantitative easing moves is as misguided as the Fed strategy itself. QE2’s perversions herald great pain farther down the road.

To commemorate their London centenary, RBC sent umbrellas to clients. No doubt that’s intended to show how they understand Brits’ obsession with the weather – and, multiplying the cliché, by implication the needs of their clients as well.

The trickle of proprietary dealers out of investment banks could become a flood in the coming months. This will provide a welcome diversification of sources of market risk-taking as traders end up at corporations and sovereign wealth funds, as well as the obvious destination of hedge funds. A broadening of the range of institutions actively trading across asset classes should help to offset a reduction in liquidity resulting from the death of the traditional bank prop desk.

The obvious port of call for a prop trader leaving a comfortable berth at a bank is a hedge fund. Another potential destination nowadays is a sovereign wealth fund. Most sovereign wealth funds are treading cautiously as they move towards making greater use of tradable markets but their sheer size means that their impact on liquidity could be significant, along with their potential contribution to bank revenues.

If central banks want to become macro prudential regulators, identifying asset price bubbles is necessary but not sufficient.

Delayed aluminium and petrochemicals mega-projects move forward; Few alternatives for local lenders

Equity cure to indebtedness ills; Holding company looking to list subsidiaries

TSE main investment focus; Privatization continues to flow

Economic policies geared towards foreign investment; Sovereign Eurobond debut proves a smash hit

Funding costs are rising and the markets periodically shut down. But regulators want you to raise more and to hold more short-term liquidity that you can’t reinvest at a profit. You don’t know how regulators will classify your risk assets or how much capital they will require you to hold. But it will be more than you have. Raising it will cost more than you can earn as a return on it. Fancy a challenge? Become a CFO. Peter Lee reports.

Energy sector to lead the way; Increase in ratings enquiries

EFG Hermes acquires 65% of Lebanese lender; Group to expand in commercial banking in Levant, then Africa

Gary Gensler is on a mission to make the CFTC the world’s most influential financial markets regulator. He wields an unprecedented mandate to interpret the statute book and thereby shape the future of banking. But his former colleagues in the banking industry claim his quest for power is based on personal ambition, causing him to ride roughshod over their reasonable opinions and creating a template that will bring unnecessary hardship to the financial industry and the broader economy. Hamish Risk interviewed the man many bankers call the “most dangerous man in finance”.

Brazil’s stability is something bankers can’t help but get enthused about.

Banks must cope with unreliable market access; Weak loan demand eases funding pressure

Risk-free nature of government bonds in doubt; Regulators’ continuing trust in his paper under challenge.

In trying to make rating agencies liable for their structured finance opinions, Dodd-Frank could end up killing off the US ABS industry altogether.

Spot trading has risen 50% in past three years; Non-bank participation increases

Fails lower but still persisting; Are broker dealers profiting from fails?