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They used to say in the old days that if you made enough noise and lost enough money, youd always get another job. Astonishingly, this still seems the case for certain individuals.

The Parker FX Index, which has 76 funds as its constituents, registered a minuscule +0.08% return in May, with 42 managers providing positive results, and 34 incurring losses. On a risk-adjusted basis, the index was down –0.03% in May. The median return for the month was 0.08%. Performance ranged from a high of +5.18% to a low of –4.80%. The index is now up 2.32% for the year. The top three performing funds on a reported basis were Spectrum Currency Fund of Chicago, (+5.18%), the Oppenheim Tactical Currency Strategy (+4.59%), and the Putnam Investments Currency Fund of Boston (+3.54%). The top three performers on a risk-adjusted basis were: the Spectrum Currency Fund (+2.35%); the Oppenheim Tactical Currency Strategy (+2.26%), and the Plimsoll Capital Headwind Program (+1.66%).

While watching the latest cookery programme from sweary diamond-geezer chef Gordon Ramsay I wondered if it would be feasible to launch the FiX on the TV.

This week has seen the launch of another new service that aims to tap into what clearly is significant demand.

Deutsche Bank has appointed Connor Kelly as its head of FX emerging markets options CEEMA and LatAm. Kelly will be based in London and will have a dual reporting line to Rob Mandeno, global head of FX spot and options, and Ahmet Arinc, head of emerging market global rates, global finance and foreign exchange. He was most recently at Goldman Sachs and before that at Calyon.

Simon Manwaring, who was previously at Bank of America, started this week at HSBC in London as a director in the bank’s FX and precious metals derivatives team. He reports to Robert Ross, HSBC’s head of G10 risk.

Colleen Wong has left Barclays, where she worked in FX bank sales. Her rumoured destination was Goldman Sachs, although the Fleet Street behemoth has denied she is going there. Looks like I got the Wong bank on that one.

In a recent interview with Euromoney magazine, Atsushi Saito, president and CEO of the Tokyo Stock Exchange Group outlined the TSE's plan to increase the number of ETFs on the Tokyo exchange to 100 in three years’ time

Best global bank 2008

While its big cousin in the north is experiencing a spot of financial bother, Latin America goes from strength to strength. When historians come to judge the past 12 months, they might well come to regard it as a watershed period for the region.

International investors clearly still have faith in the growth prospects for banks in Kazakhstan, despite the fact that the global credit crunch has hit the country harder than arguably anywhere else in emerging Europe. In late June, Alnair Capital, a private equity group backed by capital from Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nayhan, announced its intention to take a 25% stake in Kazkommertsbank, the country’s second-biggest bank by assets.

When good times turn to bad, banks have a chance to prove their mettle. Full-year results for all banks for 2007 inevitably included half a year of benign market conditions followed by a steady worsening as the US sub-prime crisis began to spread. By the end of the first quarter of 2008 – the cut-off of the 12 months that Euromoney’s Awards for Excellence are based on – it became clear that one of the Nordic region’s banks – Nordea – was weathering the storm far better than its peers.