Corporates can see the potential of shared service centres for reasons including compliance and costs, increased back office efficiency and labour arbitrage.

A wave of corporate defaults will follow the onset of a vicious global recession as sure as night follows day.

The country’s banking crisis at the start of the millennium prompted a bail-out, consolidation and the introduction of a strict regulatory regime.

A tightly regulated and fast growing market looks attractive, but tightening solvency regulations and gummed-up credit markets mean smaller insurers are finding life tough.

When it comes to mergers and acquisitions, Turkey’s banking sector remains a land of opportunity.

The economy has reached an inflection point.

Several key creditors have funded Cuba’s banking system and development in recent years.

Martín Redrado, president of the Central Bank of Argentina, tells Sudip Roy why the banker should get through the global crisis intact.

The association of German Pfandbrief banks, the VDP, was increasingly seen as the grumpy old man of covered bonds before the credit crunch.

In October the credit crunch finally devastated global equity markets as investor panic threatened to bring down all but the very strongest banks.

The government guarantee packages established across Europe will have serious implications for covered bonds.

The inclusion of the Pfandbrief in the German government’s banking guarantee marks a turning point – not just in the financial downturn but in the product’s entire history.

Nomura has named the executive committee for the acquired business in Europe; as was expected the majority of front office staff are ex-Lehman Brothers bankers taking up similar roles to those they held around Europe before the deal, while the back office management team tend to be from Nomura.

The acquisition of the European and Asian arms of Lehman Brothers means that the Japanese firm is now the world’s largest independent investment bank.

The credit crisis is prompting corporate treasuries to make efficient use of their cash.

Before corporate treasurers can begin to weigh their investment options, it is essential to create a liquidity management structure that gives both subsidiaries and head office the most advantageous set-up to minimize costs and maximize returns – while leaving sufficient cash where it is needed to pay day-to-day expenses.

For the hundreds of hedge funds caught up in the collapse of Lehman Brothers International’s prime brokerage, it might take years to claw back securities entrusted as collateral.

A three-way merger of Costa Rica’s largest state-owned banks to help deal with desperate funding shortages and reduce their operating expenses is not without its drawbacks.

In October the credit crunch finally devastated global equity markets as investor panic threatened to bring down all but the very strongest banks.

Includes Bonds, Equities, Loans, M&A, MTN, Project Finance

The European Commission could seriously damage structured finance, say speakers.

Mian Mansha is the richest man in Pakistan and owns one of the best banks in Asia.

The recent turbulence at the heart of Pakistan’s political machine raised significant but nuanced questions for Mian Mansha.

Unlike the country’s politicians, Pakistan’s leading industrialists rarely expose themselves to domestic and foreign media attention.

When a bank is huge in a particular market, the cost can sometimes be a lack of agility.

The Spanish central bank prevented its financial institutions from investing heavily in the US sub-prime related securities.

Anybody throwing a superficial glance at Eric Daniels’ CV in June 2003 could have been forgiven for erroneously assuming that his appointment was a signal that Lloyds had tired of its conspicuous failure to tie up a merger with a European partner, having rediscovered an appetite for international expansion towards the end of the 1990s.

The recent turbulence at the heart of Pakistan’s political machine raised significant but nuanced questions for Mian Mansha.

Having brushed with Indonesian politics, Gita Wirjawan knows how dirty it can be.

Hank Paulson’s desperate attempts to keep the world financial system afloat show that, despite his many qualities, he is the wrong man for the job.

Mian Mansha owns one of the best banks in Asia but his ambitions reach much further.

Surely it was high time Lloyds TSB made a life-changing acquisition? Surely it had the balance sheet to do so? And surely assets were available at a never-to-be-repeated price? Philip Moore put these questions to Lloyds’ finance director less than a month before its shotgun wedding with HBOS.

Greek banks’ share prices plummeted in 2008 – even before Lehman collapsed.

Longevity risk is a continuing, ever changing problem for pension schemes, determining the assets they have to deploy to cover their liabilities.

White labelling and third-party provision have been a perennial red herring in cash management but the credit crunch might finally be the spur to them taking off.

The US government warned that failure to pass the Paulson plan into law would lead to disaster.

For so long seen as a banking backwater, cash management’s time has come.

It will have 10 million customers, which is roughly half of Australia’s population.

Just a few months into the chief executive role at Westpac, Gail Kelly has bought out her former employer, St George Bank.

Mian Mansha owns one of the best banks in Asia but his ambitions reach much further.

Cash management for financial institutions is broadly similar in terms of the kinds of products provided by banks to corporates.

Emerging markets have driven global growth in recent years and are expected to continue to outpace the developed world as global growth slows.

At the beginning of 2007, Euromoney wrote that the retail lending boom in the Balkans was putting pressure on the region’s banking systems and that cooperation between banks and authorities was vital.

Even Kazakh bank employees are joining investors in a flight to quality away from the sector.