Search results for

The Euromoney Japanese Digest has published a list of deals of the year. The full list of winners is:

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch tops DCM bookrunner tables.

Rebuilding the balance sheets of banks, households and governments, with all that implies for higher savings rates and taxation, means the leg of the L-shaped recession will be years long.

Merseyside Pension Fund has extended two contracts for real estate investment services, IPE reports. It has extended the property investment valuation contract with Colliers CRE to cover the March and September 2009 valuations, to provide the pension fund with “additional assurance” during the current market turmoil.

--Leela Parker

The Maine Public Employees Retirement System is seeking a real estate consultant, IPE Real Estate reports. The pension fund, which will start the search within the next six months, decided in July last year to increase its target real estate allocation to 10% from 5%.

More than one senior sell-side figure has suggested I write about how much the banks should be thanking their FX businesses.

Euromoney ran a story almost a month ago about how Credit Suisse had decided to reward its staff with a load of toxic waste it had lying around on its balance sheet. This week, the market has been full of buzz about the process of signing up for the incentive scheme. The talk is that if staff want to qualify for a cash retention award, they have to agree to the scheme this week. If they delay, then the amount of compensation they will receive declines to the point where they will get what is colloquially known as diddlysquat.

It is remarkable how often things seem to repeat themselves.

There was some real fun and games in Bill and Ben (that’s dollar/yen for those readers who don’t understand rhyming slang) on Wednesday around the 3pm option expiry time. This time last year, I wrote about a huge call spread (100.00 versus 90.00 strikes) Citi executed, and sources say it was this strategy’s expiry that caused all the excitement.

Various institutions kindly send me their research, most of which is excellent. Some of it explains the past, while others predict the future.

There was a lot of coverage in the UK this week about comments from ‘high-profile market legend’™ Jim Rogers about the state of the country.