We were all worried at Euromoney this week, what with all the headlines about swine flu, when our esteemed editor rang in sick on Monday. He claimed he was feverish, felt a bit clammy and was shaky. Thankfully, it turns out that he was merely suffering from wine flu. This is a common affliction that seems to regularly do the rounds in the office, but normally on Fridays. It seems it’s contracted by simply glugging too many bottles of Rioja. Luckily, our leader was back on his feet by Tuesday and he arrived in the office just in time to see me disappear off to the Fifth International Rouble Settlement Forum, which was being hosted by Icap at its London headquarters.
The meeting was chaired once again by Darryl Hooker, global emerging market manager at Icap Electronic Broking. Hooker has played a key role in bringing together a diverse range of market participants in an effort to try to drag the rouble market into the 21st century and no doubt he will have been pleased to see the forum so well attended; for the first time, representatives from CLS, Swift and the Russian central bank were all brought together in one room.