Strip out the mega Verizon-Vodafone deal and European M&A activity year-to-date is at its lowest level since 2009. Hopes are, nevertheless, growing that an improvement in the economic climate and corporate risk-taking will boost deal-making.

India’s economy and currency has taken a battering, yet the worst of rupee depreciation should now be behind us. Stability should return, though a more meaningful appreciation of the rupee is still some distance away, writes Sanjay Mathur, Managing Director and Head of Economics Research, Asia Pacific ex-Japan at RBS.

Emerging market (EM) currencies are expected to continue to expand their share of the $5.3 trillion-a-day global forex market despite the turmoil, with China’s RMB leading the charge.

Regulators want to shift the risks of such trading away from banks and towards financial institutions and are also pushing for more trades to be cleared centrally, writes Graham Shuttlewood, product manager at RBS.

Concerns are mounting about the risks to India’s financial health posed by a growing shadow banking sector that has helped fund a decade-long investment-fuelled consumption and investment boom.

September tapering by the US Fed, which until recently markets took as given, is looking less certain as downside risk factors for winding down the central bank’s $85 billion-a-month stimulus programme continue to mount.

Capital-hungry borrowers seeking to plug the huge infrastructure deficit in Latin America’s largest economy through international capital markets are hoping Eike Batista’s OGX group will avoid default.

UK corporates that use cheap debt to fill the gaps in their pension funds could enjoy significant strategic, cash flow and accounting benefits. James Courtenay-Evans, Managing Director, and Shoaib Yaqub, Associate Director, Corporate Financing Solutions at RBS, explain.

Brazil’s recovery is being cut off at the knees by a set of economic challenges that have all come home to roost – from a depreciating currency and rising current-account deficit to structural problems, including an overdependence on credit-fuelled consumption.

The tapering-inspired exodus of capital from fixed income and equity markets has forced down emerging market currency yields, killing the high-yield trade and leading to a massive unwind of currency positions, according to currency traders on both sides of the Atlantic.