Search results for

Deals of the Year

Deals of the Year

International investors this summer gained their best chance yet to invest in Transcaucasia, the region of the CIS separating Russia and the Middle East, with the start of voucher privatization in Azerbaijan. The country's programme is more open to foreign investment than almost any other in the CIS and lets investors take exposure to an economy that is growing at more than 5% a year.

Some unusual rumblings have been heard from Singapore recently. In July the resignation was announced of Koh Beng Seng, deputy managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and reckoned to be the country's hard man of financial regulation. Then the prime minister persuaded him to withdraw his resignation and asked him to join a committee on banking deregulation. Behind the scenes, a furious debate is raging about the kind of financial centre Singapore should be.

Asset privatized: Svyazinvest

This is the game to beat all games. And it has a purpose: to give bankers and regulators experience of a financial crisis without the pain of losing their money - or their jobs. Euromoney (with PA Consulting Group and CSFI) set the conditions for a financial meltdown and invited 50 experienced professionals to come and play it out. The tension and the rivalry were real. Most agree they learned something about crises, and perhaps how to prepare better for the next one. By David Shirreff.

We've called them the big-game hunters - the men who track down the juiciest debt deals and clinch them. How do they do it in the burgeoning Asian market? Sure, they need to know what their banks can deliver and what their clients need. And they must be able to convince borrowers that transactions will fly in the market. Beyond that there's a whole slew of intangibles that can be summed up as establishing relationships. Having friends in high places helps, but you may have to do more than play golf with them - chess, pinball and even the odd bout of karaoke can be required. It also pays to be able to talk about anything, from Japanese ethnohistory to Korean youth soccer. Steven Irvine spoke to some of Asia's finest exponents of talking on their feet.

Hostile bids and privatization have loosened bank/company relations and let in the foreign investment banks. There's no looking back. By Laura Covill.

Finance Minister and Central Banker of the Year: The regional winners

Finance Minister and Central Banker of the Year: The regional winners

As it tried to fend off speculative attacks against the baht this summer, the Central Bank of Thailand played every trick it knew, from the conventional to the heavy-handed, to prop up the currency. This included raiding firms suspected of spreading negative rumours and black-listing investment banks that lent to hedge funds. James Sinclair reports.

Oriental Hotel,