In India it’s simply called The Feud and, on July 18, after years of simmering, it finally boiled over. That day, Mumbai-based industrialist Anil Ambani was finally, unwillingly, forced to pull the plug on a planned telecommunications mega-merger between his flagship corporation Reliance Communications (RelCom) and MTN Group of South Africa.

Like other global investment banks that are rushing to send their best talent to the Gulf, UBS is seeking to take advantage of the opportunities there.

Regional buoyancy and declining opportunities elsewhere are pulling banks into the Gulf region, bringing with them research capability. Local firms still lead Euromoney’s poll but foreign rivals are coming up fast. Rupert Wright reports.

Cypriot finance minister Charilaos Stavrakis wants to cement his country’s role as a centre of capitalism.

Troika Dialog, Russia’s oldest investment bank, has announced appointments to strengthen its market position in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Raiffeisen International, the central and eastern European banking arm of Austria’s RZB Group, has announced plans to establish a greenfield operation in Kazakhstan.

The financing for Peru’s biggest ever project is in the final stages after a $3.8 billion package was signed last month.

Euromoney’s annual structured credit poll reveals that JPMorgan is leading a much reduced pack.

The current market is testing relations between managers and investors to the full, says Neil Wilson.

New entrant aims for a big splash in dark pools but Nasdaq OMX and Bats are close behind, and Baikal promises intelligent order matching.

At a difficult time for the global asset management industry, the GCC countries are increasingly attractive markets. The region’s oil and gas fuelled wealth and increasing investment sophistication offer huge opportunities. Regional financial centres equipped with world-class regulation and facilities provide the right environments for international firms to establish local operations, while the Shariah-compliant investment market is growing in popularity and diversity. Stuart Pearce, CEO of Qatar Financial Centre Authority, introduces this report.

Halbis, the active management arm of HSBC Global Asset Management, has recruited Ed Conroy to its global emerging markets team, where he will focus on researching Russian equities. Conroy joins from Aberdeen Asset Management, where he was previously an investment manager in the global emerging markets equity team. Based in London, Conroy reports to Douglas Helfer, senior portfolio manager and head of Russian equities at Halbis.

The effects of the credit crunch have spread across all areas of finance, affecting even the world’s most liquid market: swaps in euros. People still want to do business, but banks need to reorder their balance sheets and regain confidence. And that could take a long time.

In 2004 Santander had looked at ABN Amro as an entire business but decided it was not interested in a deal. Botín told his board at the time that the only parts of ABN that Santander might be interested in were its Brazil and Italy operations.

Dealers report that liquidity in the variance swaps market held up well amid recent equity market turbulence. Equity volatility might finally have matured to the point where it is an asset class in its own right. John Ferry reports.

New heads of fixed income, loans and equity appointed in Europe – Berman takes banking role.

Regulators have put huge pressure on the CDS market to address counterparty risk. And the collapse of Lehman Brothers shows why. But in doing so they might be creating a bandwagon that exacerbates rather than solves the problem. Louise Bowman reports.

The annual Daiwa SMBC debt syndicate summer press party will stay in the memory of all who attended. But not just because of the fine wine, company and fare on offer at Sweetings, a City of London culinary institution. An unintended level of prescience led European head of fixed income at the Japanese brokerage Andrew Asbury to decide that the theme for the party would be based on reality TV programme The Apprentice. Asbury, affectionately known as Asbo in the industry, had partygoers vote for their favourite members of the Daiwa syndicate team. In keeping with the Apprentice theme, Asbo took up the role of Sir Alan Sugar/Donald Trump.

Investors say the Middle East is becoming an interesting new territory for hedge fund managers, as opportunities in the region increase.

Abu Dhabi state-owned investment fund Mubadala has agreed to set up an $8 billion joint venture with General Electric. It will "focus exclusively on investment opportunities generated through GE Capital’s existing origination and servicing capacity, with targeted assets of $40 billion," they said in a joint statement. Mubadala will also become one of the 10 biggest stakeholders in GE by buying shares in the open market.

HBOS is struggling. That’s why its stock price is depressed and its rights issue came close to disaster.

Shinsei Bank has announced that it is to acquire General Electric’s Japanese consumer finance business for ¥580 billion ($5.4 billion). The deal comprises GE’s personal loans unit, Lake, as well as its mortgage loans and credit card arms, and will bring Shinsei more than 2 million new customers as it seeks to combine its consumer finance and retail operations.

It’s been a ropey year so far for Pakistan’s embattled stock markets but better news is on the horizon for global investors. Over the next 12 months, the government is expected to push ahead with aggressive plans to privatize a clutch of state-run firms, as the government seeks to cut into a current account deficit that widened to $14 billion in the fiscal year to end-June 2008, from less than half that a year earlier.

Just weeks after RBS’s shareholders took up 95% of the rights on offer in the UK bank’s £12 billion ($24 billion) rights issue, the largest ever, investors shunned similar cash calls from UK banks HBOS and Barclays.

These tongue-in-cheek versions of common financial parlance are particularly insightful given recent market events.

It’s a year since the credit crunch began and still there is no end in sight to the bloodletting. Alex Chambers looks at the prospects for bankers facing this unprecedented downturn as traditional alternative employment avenues, such as hedge funds, struggle to pick up the slack.

In-house hedge funds look to have been a costly mistake for investment banks. Far better, it seems, is to take stakes in independent ones.

IPO ends long struggle for the gambling tycoon.

Nasir Afaf has joined Calyon as its global head of FX trading. Sources say he is replacing Steve Nutland; Nutland moved at the end of June from London to run Calyon’s FX operations in Asia.

Alliance & Leicester is the latest rabbit that Emilio Botín has pulled out of his hat as Santander continues its inexorable rise. Botín has now cemented his reputation for being a dealmaker as well as one of the most talented retail bankers in history. What else does he have up his sleeve? Clive Horwood reports.