Sterling market opened in the Middle East and CIS.

Chesapeake is first US energy issuer to target euro investors this decade.

Barclays Capital has identified a budding mortgage-backed securities market as one of the key reasons for its decision to open an investment banking and broker-dealer business in Mexico. The UK bank started operations in Mexico last month with $100 million in capital. Barcap also hopes to take advantage of the fast-growing local capital markets, as more companies seek to raise money through high-yielding peso-denominated bonds.

Barclays Capital has decided to add algorithmic trading functionality to the front end of its Barx foreign exchange trading platform. The bank made its PowerFill service available to clients on its graphical user interface (GUI) on September 18.

Five years ago, the bank wasn’t even a top 10 player, but thanks to some innovative thinking and the Barx trading platform, it has proven that being biggest isn’t necessarily best.

I was lunching at Cecconi’s with my friend Richard. Cecconi’s is an Italian restaurant in Mayfair frequented by hedge fund hotties, Latvian lovelies with pneumatic mammaries and the odd voyeur such as myself. Dame Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of publishing group Pearson – or her doppelganger – was at the next table. Regretfully, under my Cecconi classification system, she falls into the voyeur category. Well she’s hardly a buxom Latvian is she? Richard is the brother I never had. He is funny, clever, irreverent and, in his spare time, a successful investment banker. If he weren’t one of my closest friends, I would hate him for the insouciance of it all.