Assertion that private funding is vital challenged but private skills might be essential.

Stock market reaches all-time high; long-awaited Eurobond debut expected.

Knowing what finance terms people are Googling can give you an investment edge. That’s according to three academics who analyzed changes in the frequency of 98 terms – such as revenue, credit and Nasdaq – in Google searches from 2004 to 2011.

Simon Pettitt, head of fixed income at Westhouse Securities, comments on the rally.

Michael Krautzberger, BlackRock’s head of European fixed income, comments on what low interest rates mean for bond investors.

Risks cannot be isolated from rest of financial system; concerns about contagion more effectively dealt with elsewhere

Lending campaigns have a 90% success rate and donations-based projects 50%, but equity-based platforms have been slow to take off.

Strong foreign demand; Philippines to follow.

It is not just the capital markets that are looking up.

Now that the Philippines has achieved investment-grade status by Fitch, investors might be disappointed with tighter spreads and limitations in the stock market.

Bahrain’s Investcorp has carved out a solid reputation over the past 30 years, but how is its founder preparing the firm for the future?

Brazil’s consumption-led economy is starting to run aground.

When two management reports from 2010 audited by KPMG were leaked to the campaign group Global Witness and released online, the world was given a remarkable insight into where the LIA had invested. And since all its assets have been frozen since early 2011, it is very likely still accurate.

Mohsen Derregia was plucked from nowhere to run the $60 billion fund of the Libyan Investment Authority. He found a mess that he spent a year trying to clean up. Now, as many of LIA’s investments are being reassessed, he’s on his way out. He tells an extraordinary tale of sovereign wealth in a conflict-torn country.

The over-capacity and over-investment problem in China is concentrated in low-end manufacturing businesses and sectors that experienced a massive boom during the last decade. Conversely, public infrastructure is grossly inadequate to accommodate further urbanization, according to BCA Research.

Amid political pressure to reduce cannabis-related crime, the legalization of the drug for medical usage could create a $40 billion industry in the US alone, opening up new investment opportunities – with Portugal, Spain, Israel, Czech Republic and Canada also on the radar for venture capitalists. Some even describe the opportunity as a new form of social-impact investing.

'We would be thrilled to make a return in the teens,' he tells Euromoney.

Euromoney’s best-managed Latin American company, Falabella, prides itself on serving the investor community as assiduously as it does its retail customers. And best company in Brazil Bradesco seeks to apply the IT skills it uses in banking to its relations with investors.

Astonishing investor inflows into the loan market on both sides of the Atlantic since the beginning of the year have raised the tantalizing prospect of the CLO market returning to Europe.

Evidence of at least some degree of a Chinese slowdown over the past six months has coincided with a different development. Since last summer, there have been reports of mining corporations losing hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to union activity and stoppages in South Africa.

Mining has been central to Africa’s resurgence and an associated wave of international listings. But shareholders are now pressing the big mining companies to conserve cash. Amid talk of strikes and nationalism, can the sector handle a less voracious China?

Rosneft signs second tranche; Maroc Telecom next

FSA approves Crowdcube, appoints crowdfunding officer; US P2P lenders take off, endorsed by industry stalwarts

Gold and copper lose their lustre; Dynamic strategies replace index plays

The balance-sheet re-leveraging involved in big M&A deals threatens companies’ credit standings and thus their bondholders’ paper.

Investors are probably being too bullish about the size and buying power of Africa’s middle class.

The currency war that many feared as an inevitable accompaniment to the credit crisis played out as more of a paint-ball contest until the recent sharp slide of the yen. The violence of the yen fall of roughly 20% reawakened fears of a wave of competitive devaluations.

CDS spreads are indicative of liquidity, not default, risk. The ban on naked shorting will drain bond market liquidity and increase volatility.

In an apparent about-turn, Mervyn King agreed to sign a swap agreement with Beijing as soon as possible, in order to keep up with the accelerated pace of RMB internationalisation.

The prospect that quantitative easing by the US Federal Reserve could come to an end much sooner than expected has frightened investors, but the negative effects on emerging markets shouldn’t be overstated, say analysts.