JPMorgan has overtaken Goldman Sachs as the largest manager of hedge fund assets globally.

UK and continental European investors snapped up shares in Chagala Group, the leading property developer in oil-rich western Kazakhstan, enabling it to raise $120 million through an IPO on the main market in London last month.

Are Iranian banks based in London an unwitting victim of political tensions in the Gulf, as US authorities try to limit their access to international finance?

Hats off to the financial institutions team at a US investment bank who made a highly amusing Bollywood movie using an online service.

Perhaps the biggest name to jump ship in the European debt syndicate world recently has been Marco Baldini. Baldini spent just under 12 years at Barclays Capital of which nearly 11 were on the debt syndicate desk, and he has now moved to Merrill Lynch.

Aston Martin announced the start of a new chapter in its financing history as the sports car manufacturer agreed its leveraged buyout to a consortium of investors led by sports car veteran David Richards.

Singapore leads the way in Asia Reits, followed by Japan and Hong Kong. Other countries are trying to take the same course, but with varying degrees of success. Chris Wright reports.

Anxiety rippled through the UK credit market when the UK’s top non-conformist mortgage lender, Kensington Group, said it was considering a sale to a US bank. Roger James explains why.

Focus should be on monetary and wage policy, says Redrado.

The influence of Basle II is starting to be felt in UK mortgage lenders’ funding plans.

Richard Price is moving from UBS to Dresdner Kleinwort to take on the role of head of equity sales, based in London. He has spent 18 years at UBS in a variety of roles including head of institutional sales for Australasia, head of pan-European equity sales North America and, most recently, head of pan-European sales into the UK.

ABN Amro has taken Richard Zirps out of Lehman Brothers and made him head of FIG capital markets for Austria and Germany based in London. He reports to Steve Curry, European head of FIG capital markets.

"He’d been my client for 30 years, and he invited me down to see him at his home in Florida. When I got there he had assembled his entire family – wife, children, grandkids, the lot. I sat down. He handed me a letter and asked me to read it out loud to the room. It said simply: ‘Dear Bob, In the event that I should pass away, please tell my wife exactly what she needs to do, and ensure that she does it’"

SG CIB takes its cue from collateralized loan obligation securitization.

Let Hoteloc be a warning on the risks in short tail period.

Despite encouraging news from Bank of America, most US mortgage providers have so far remained aloof despite investor enthusiasm for covered bonds. Jethro Wookey reports.

For most of this decade the majority of US investment banks have scorned covered bonds. Not any longer. So if it's true that they no longer believe it to be an unprofitable backwater of the European capital markets, what factors are at work? Philip Moore discovers.

Abu Dhabi investment vehicle builds global partnerships.

Japan’s small and slowly developing bond e-trading business is dominated by two firms, and having two separate platforms for the same product isn't speeding things up. Lawrence White asks the CEOs why this is.

The excitement of the inaugural Euromoney US covered bond conference clearly got to some delegates in New York last month. Not least Dr Louis Hagan, executive director of the VdP – otherwise known as the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks.

Why the China rainmaker just won’t go away

There was a flurry of activity in the FX employment market in March as those market participants who got bonuses banked their cheques.

Industry-owned utility ponders fundamental change to business model.

Recent equity market upheavals are presenting new challenges and opportunities for volatility and correlation traders. With the downturn in markets that kicked off at the end of February came a massive jump in short-dated implied volatility. The Chicago Board Option Exchange’s Vix index, which measures the implied volatility of S&P 500 index options and represents the market’s expectations of volatility over the next 30 days, jumped almost 80%, increasing from about 10% to 18%. Volatility in other major equity markets, such as the Eurostoxx, also jumped, as did equity market correlation. The 30-day realized correlation level on the Eurostoxx 50 doubled from just under 20% to 40%. Immediately before the downturn, volatility and correlation had been trading at historically low levels.

Asian private banks are continuing to visit the wilder shores of alternative investments. Chris Wright reports.

Success in investment banking has always depended on relationships and connections, as well as expertise.

ABN merger may give global scale, but at what cost to the businesses that have driven the UK bank forward?

Big hires, new local offices and investment in a specialist hedge fund show the US firm is getting serious about the emerging markets.

Bankers’ growing interest in environment-friendly financial opportunities can only be a good thing – whatever their motivation.

Recent setbacks will not hold back the world’s second-largest economy’s growing globalization.