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The global equity bear market and credit crunch have slowed Latin American growth but the rise of the region’s wealthy is still spectacular. One effect of disruption in developed markets is a flight to perceived quality in wealth management – to domestic providers rather than those abroad. Jason Mitchell reports.

Banorte, the biggest locally owned bank in Mexico, plans to establish a new venture capital unit that will be spun off from its distressed assets business, Solida, according to the bank’s chief executive.

G8 ECM The number of ECM transactions from issuers in the G8 countries in the year to date has fallen 42% to 941 deals compared with the same period in 2007. The total volume of equity raised, however, fell by just 9%. Russia has experienced the sharpest decline in volume, with $3.5 billion raised via 12 deals and 1% market share, down from 9% in the 2007 period. US issuers, by contrast, have raised $143.7 billion via 269 deals so far this year, compared with $134.8bln via 496 deals in the 2007 period.

Luis Valdivieso was named as the new finance minister in Peru last month. After nearly two years as finance minister, Luis Carranza stepped down from office. The move was not a surprise and Valdivieso is expected to maintain the same conservative approach to fiscal and debt management. Many applaud Carranza’s austere fiscal policies and credit him with moving Peru towards investment-grade status. On the day of Carranza’s resignation, Standard & Poor’s awarded Peru an investment-grade rating, the second rating agency to do so after Fitch in April.

When the US SEC announced in July that it would impose a 30-day ban on illegal naked shorting in 19 stocks, some hedge funds were up in arms.

US fixed-income trading volume generated by hedge funds declined to 20% over 2007-08 from 29% in 2006-07 according to Greenwich Associates. In distressed debt, however, hedge funds account for 95% of US trading volume. Lehman Brothers ranked as top dealer to hedge funds in the survey despite decreases in hedge fund trading share.

After years of benefiting from the strong economic performance of the Baltic states, Sweden’s Swedbank is now seeing the downside of its exposure to the region in the wake of the recent sharp slowdown in growth.

The precise responsibility of parties such as accountants and administrators in the event of hedge fund portfolio valuation discrepancies has been of growing concern among service providers.

James Crosby, former head of HBOS, delivered his interim report on the state of mortgage finance in the UK to the government on July 29. But it does not make for good holiday reading. Despite outlining the extent to which lenders have completely withdrawn from the market and the effect that the shortage of mortgage finance is having on the housing market, Crosby emphasizes that his final recommendation might well be to do nothing. "I should stress that I may yet recommend that the government should not intervene in the market, on the grounds that such intervention would create more problems than it would solve," he says.

Moscow-headquartered investment bank Renaissance Capital has teamed up with France’s BNP Paribas to offer investors a diversified form of structured equity exposure to the Russian market.

Dealers report that liquidity in the variance swaps market held up well amid recent equity market turbulence. Equity volatility might finally have matured to the point where it is an asset class in its own right. John Ferry reports.

New entrant aims for a big splash in dark pools but Nasdaq OMX and Bats are close behind, and Baikal promises intelligent order matching.