April 2013
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LATEST ARTICLES
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Most of us carry scars from the excesses of the debt-fuelled casino days. The acceleration, crash and burn of the 2005-09 period led to lost jobs, dwindling pension pots and puny returns on cash savings. But for some the great financial recession has cast few shadows.
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For some of the highest returns around, the best bet is to invest in weed. Seattle-based firm Privateer Holdings is a private equity fund investing in industries that derive their business from medical marijuana.
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By 2015, the establishment of the Asean Economic Community will lower trade barriers between countries in southeast Asia. The agreement will bring opportunities for increased trade and investment, but for Thailand it also means that in less than three years the country will need to grapple with growing competition from the rest of the Asean region.
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It is not just the capital markets that are looking up.
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M&A in Thailand has enjoyed unprecedented levels of activity recently. Hungry for assets, Thai companies are looking abroad for their acquisitions. According to UBS, M&A transactions involving Thai corporations have grown from an average of $3.7 billion a year to a record $18.7 billion in 2012.
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Following the second star to the right until morning might be wiser than listening to many central bankers. They may have put us all on a road to nowhere.
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Collateral damage from capital controls; Brazil’s policies criticized by neighbours.
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In the ledger of economic recovery, reasons to be optimistic are neatly balanced by reasons to be pessimistic.
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January 2014 targeted for adoption; Moody’s boosts sovereign to Baa2.
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Public spat with Forbes over rich list; follows new CMA appointment.
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Someone always benefits from a crisis. And in the crisis-torn world of banking, the PR community is having a busy old time of it. Few, perhaps, are as busy as Giovanni Sanfelice of the London office of Barabino and Partners.
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With Mexico in, market could rival Brazil’s; Peru undertakes capital markets reform.
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Prompted by high liquidity and yield hunger, but appeal might be dampened by rising developed markets.
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As central banks show little sign of turning off the liquidity taps, the markets are getting used to the idea that interest rates will be lower for longer.
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GT Bank targets east Africa acquisition; Standard Bank reaffirms Africa focus.
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The prize for strangest interview of the month goes to television-friendly Malaysian serial chief executive and football chairman Tony Fernandes. The founder of AirAsia and chairman of English Premier League club Queens Park Rangers turned up for his interview with Euromoney an hour late, with no socks on, carrying a plastic bag and wearing a T-shirt that he might well have slept in.
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“They needed a good kick up the backside” Tony Fernandes, CEO of Air Asia, on the post-crisis banking industry
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“When you are getting 6% in high yield, something somewhere has gone horribly wrong” An investor doesn’t like what he sees in credit
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One of the most important political and economic breakthroughs for the Philippines came in October last year when president Benigno Aquino finally agreed to a framework for peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Muslim rebel group in Mindanao. It is hoped this will lead both groups to a final peace pact this year and allow for more inclusive economic development throughout the country, bringing thousands more people out of poverty. According to Standard Chartered, peace and political stability in Mindanao could add 0.1% to GDP growth at the end of 2013 and 0.3% by 2018. For the Philippines, the stars are finally aligned.
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The country’s leaders and its bankers hope a renewed surge of infrastructure investment will deepen equity capital markets and drive regional integration.
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Long viewed as an under-performer, the nation has finally been rated investment grade by Fitch. How important is this stamp of approval to its economy’s development?
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Domestic Chilean market seen as saturated; Colombia the prime initial focus.
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The flood of Chinese IPOs in the 1990s skewed the focus of investment banks in Asia towards ECM. With the near demise of this business, banks face the taxing problem of finding an appropriate balance between ECM, DCM and M&A.
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Bahrain’s Investcorp has carved out a solid reputation over the past 30 years, but how is its founder preparing the firm for the future?
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The Kazakh banking sector is still burdened by a big non-performing-loan problem. Central bank governor Grigoriy Marchenko explains how the country is approaching the issue with more urgency and a more conservative approach to financial management.
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Competition Board rules on rate fixing; new curbs on consumer lending expected.
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Increasingly however, bankers want to be seen as human beings and not as money machines. I was amused that even Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, is keen to portray a cuddlier image. In March, Blankfein appeared on CBS’s evening news programme espousing the cause of gay marriage.
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Brazil’s consumption-led economy is starting to run aground.
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Putin gets a strong but pliant central bank governor in Elvira Nabiullina. She might please other constituents too.
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Character does matter in post-crisis banking; if yours is in question, it is time to get out.
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Plan might founder due to federal stance akin to that for a wider Eurobond.
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The market needs a high profile issuer looking to raise a lot of money
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Fed thumbs up for Citi as JPMorgan stumbles; Citi’s Dickson says capital markets see increased demand.
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Some would say that Orcel’s pay package is yet another example of same old, same old. So it was exciting to come across an example of the new paradigm in the financial sector. What do I mean by that over-used phrase? In short, a firm that is doing things differently from the discredited big-bank universal model. I have been seeing the name Berenberg Bank a lot recently: often in connection with research calls on European stocks. My curiosity piqued, I was pleased when a friend introduced me to two of the firm’s senior management. In mid-March, I met Andrew McNally, head of Berenberg Bank UK, and Hendrik Riehmer, a managing partner, to learn more about the business.
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Ostensibly designed as middlemen to safely channel bank credit to the neglected private sector, credit-guarantee companies have not been content with this fee-earning business.
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Lebanon can boast something few developed economies have – growth and a well-capitalized banking sector. Sadly, this and the promise of a natural resource windfall cannot hide the dire need for structural reforms and leadership from the top to undertake them.
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In late March, a memorial service was held for Padraic Fallon, the former chairman of Euromoney Institutional Investor, the company that owns Euromoney magazine. Padraic died much too young, at the age of 66, after a battle with cancer.
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When two management reports from 2010 audited by KPMG were leaked to the campaign group Global Witness and released online, the world was given a remarkable insight into where the LIA had invested. And since all its assets have been frozen since early 2011, it is very likely still accurate.
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ETFs and swaps drive alternative beta; fixed income braced for negative returns.
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Morgan Stanley veteran joins Goldman; UBS leads fee table
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Correlation books and CVA exposure on the block; RWA relief boosts capital.
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Huge sums of money lost, hidden contracts found, people in power because of privilege rather than professionalism, undue political influence and even death. No, it’s not the latest scandal from the Vatican, but the Monte dei Paschi drama. And now the spotlight is falling on the wider implications of its near-fall – not least, the ownership and board structure of many of Italy’s leading banks.
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More banks could ease their regulatory capital requirements by securitizing loan or derivative portfolios.
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An underdeveloped manufacturing base and revenues dependent on remittances are holding the country back.
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The annual report for 2012 released by UBS in March demonstrated that its management continues to flounder, while offering perverse hope that the disaster-prone bank might be stumbling towards a sustainable business model.
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Umpqua Bank in Portland, Oregon, has succeeded in making bank branches profitable. It is now the largest community bank on the US west coast. CEO Ray Davis talks of giving customers an entirely different experience. How far can he go?
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The region’s ambitious corporate leaders are fast becoming among the most important clients in global investment banking. The battle for their business is fierce. Balance-sheet heft is important, but loyalty and forging close partnerships are the keys to success.
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April 2013 marks my seventh anniversary with Euromoney. During that time, I have watched, sometimes awe-struck, sometimes gobsmacked, developments in the financial markets. I have written about big banks, hedge funds, asset managers and the twists and turns of politics at these institutions.
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High-profile Malaysian CEO Tony Fernandes is intent on furthering his companies’ pan-Asian expansion, notably through AirAsia. He sees such international activities as The Apprentice Asia and ownership of Queens Park Rangers FC as useful publicity for his business ventures.
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Few companies illustrate the new breed of Asian corporate titans as well as Chinese electronics firm Lenovo. It was founded in Beijing less than 30 years ago. Today, it is the world’s second-biggest PC vendor, with 27,000 employees and annual sales of around $30 billion.
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Record issuance while EMTN volumes slip; exotic derivative trades hit by appetite and regulation.
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Mohsen Derregia was plucked from nowhere to run the $60 billion fund of the Libyan Investment Authority. He found a mess that he spent a year trying to clean up. Now, as many of LIA’s investments are being reassessed, he’s on his way out. He tells an extraordinary tale of sovereign wealth in a conflict-torn country.
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The agonizing process of agreeing a bailout in Cyprus has set troubling precedents for creditors, laid bare fractures within the European currency union and reminded investors of the ad hoc, inconsistent and arbitrary nature of its institutions’ response to sovereign crises.
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Euromoney columnist Jon Macaskill imagines how Doug L Braunstein, the former chief financial officer of JPMorgan, chronicled his testimony at last week's Senate hearing.
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German lobbying scuppers mutualization; senior bondholders to share Cypriot depositors’ fate.
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Mervyn King, the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, put a temporary halt to the slide in the pound on Thursday, but the currency still faces challenges in the weeks ahead.
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The strength in the dollar after Wednesday’s robust US retail sales data highlights the shift in the foreign exchange market that has seen the US currency shed its mantle as the funding currency of choice in the first few months of this year.
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'We would be thrilled to make a return in the teens,' he tells Euromoney.
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Morgan Stanley argues that authorities will continue to drive negative real rates, making high-yielding peripheral government debt – which banks are compelled to hold – a good buy.
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Strong foreign demand powered Thailand’s second inflation-linked bond, highlighting expectations of price pressures in developing Asia and the shortage of investable inflation-hedging products.