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Inflation-linked debate: The upside of rising prices

With no sub-prime problems, real estate bubble or complex credit portfolios to worry about, the country’s banking sector should be a relative safe haven. But while investors remain receptive to their covered bonds, banks are finding liquidity scarce. Peter Koh reports.

Companies are beginning to look to their neighbours for investment flows.

To obtain the overall country risk score, Euromoney assigns a weighting to nine categories. These are political risk (25% weighting), economic performance (25%), debt indicators (10%), debt in default or rescheduled (10%), credit ratings (10%), access to bank finance (5%), access to short-term finance (5%), access to capital markets (5%), and forfaiting (5%).

Brazil is notorious for many things, caipirinhas, carnival and beautiful beaches... but in the mind of one Euromoney journalist Brazil also breeds a special type of PR who can invent some of the most original excuses for delays to meetings.

Exchange-traded funds backed by physical gold are to be launched on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, following last August’s debut on the Osaka exchange of ETFs backed by bonds linked to the price of the precious metal. Japan’s investors have long had an affinity for gold: it is the only country where buyers of gold-related options contracts frequently exercise their right to delivery, according to Itsuo Toshima, regional representative of the World Gold Council. It is also the only country in which gold accumulation plans, whereby investors gradually acquire small amounts of the metal through diligent monthly payments of as little as ¥3,000 ($30), have succeeded.

Anyone who follows the travails of England’s football, cricket and rugby teams should easily have predicted Northern Rock’s troubles.

The internet campaign to raise €5 billion to save the career of rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel, launched on social networking site Facebook, has got off to a slow start, with only 2,095 members so far having pledged €1 each towards the cause.

Anticipation of the much-discussed but now postponed launch of the European residential mortgage-backed securities index (ERMBX) is behind violent swings in spread levels on single-name credit default swaps on RMBS tranches. Markit, ERMBX’s owner, announced that the index’s debut has been delayed because of market volatility. That volatility, in fact, has been caused by buyers of protection on single-name CDS referencing prime RMBS AAAs, say market participants.

Dow Kim, a 10-year veteran of Merrill Lynch who left the bank in May 2007, is to go ahead with his hedge fund, Diamond Lake, which he plans to roll out in April. Kim was co-president of Merrill’s global markets and investment banking division, and is largely blamed for the losses in the bank’s fixed-income and mortgages businesses despite leaving before the full extent of exposure came to light.

Robert Palache has left Morgan Stanley after a little over 18 months in a role that involved the securitization of corporate, real estate and infrastructure assets. Palache was also the newly appointed chair of the European Securitization Forum.