Chris Garnett interviewed Baudouin Prot, chief executive of BNP Paribas at the recent Euromoney Paris Forum.

Love him or loathe him – and in Serbia plenty of people do just that – there’s no ignoring Mladjan Dinkic. The first sight that greets – his opponents argue assails – arrivals at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport is a giant poster of the man himself, promoting the G17 Plus party he hopes he will lead to power in parliamentary elections in late January.

Barclays Capital says it has joined LiquidityHub, a liquidity aggregator in interest rate swaps and US treasuries expected to start in early 2007.

Competitive pressures are driving US banks and corporates to use the new wave of hybrids.

First it was the London Stock Exchange. Then Euronext. Then Euronext and Borsa Italiana or maybe just Borsa Italiana. Deutsche Börse clearly wants to do a deal.

Concern that China is poised to diversify its currency reserve holdings has meant some downward pressure.

The first deal for the International Finance Facility for Immunization has priced. Iffim is an international development funding project supported by the governments of the UK, France, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain, South Africa and Brazil and by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It uses these donor sponsors’ future commitments to front load aid to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (Gavi) which is targeting 500 million children in the world’s poorest countries.

The US bank has finally got what it wanted – but it remains to be seen what happens now with GDB.

But proposed exchange believes it will not harm plans to bring new volumes and efficiencies to the forex market.

How much CPDO volume can be produced before it starts to affect the market of which it is a derivative?

Recent flurries in M&A in the hedge fund sector have not come out of the blue, says Ted Gooden, partner at M&A adviser to financial companies Berkshire Capital, and more are to be expected in 2007.

Pomegranate Capital is to be the first fund of hedge funds investing entirely in funds managed by women. CEO Susan Solovay reportedly has a list of 250 hedge funds run by women and has received backing from the Safra family and Fortress. Solovay points to research showing that female investors are more likely than their male counterparts to produce consistent long-term growth, yet find it harder to raise capital.

Turkey’s banks survived a full-blown crisis this year, but they retain a high risk profile, according to a report by Standard & Poor’s.

forex market participants were shocked by the news that David Puth, head of global currencies and commodities at JPMorgan, had suddenly resigned from the bank on November 13.

The Nakheel Group has sold a $2.5 billion ijara sukuk, the first equity-linked sukuk to be issued.

The Bank of Georgia is planning to launch an IPO of its global depositary receipts on the London Stock Exchange.

Archeus Capital’s recent closure suggests that hedge funds should beware of relying on administrators to maintain vital data and should keep their own back-ups.

Electronic Trading’s lawsuit is shining some light on the opaque world of securities lending. Meanwhile other intermediaries are springing up.

The Inter–American Development Bank has agreed to forgive about $3.5 billion of debt owed by Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua.

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In what will be a landmark transaction, Privatbank, Ukraine’s biggest bank, is poised to be the country’s first issuer of an asset-backed securitization.

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former US president Bill Clinton, has moved to Avenue Capital from consultancy McKinsey. Avenue Capital Group is a $12 billion hedge fund firm focusing on distressed securities in which Morgan Stanley recently took a small stake.

If, as expected, BT uses a bumper securitization to protect itself against LBO predators it might start to give other potential targets ideas.

Continuing high levels of capital liquidity rest on flows from securitization and derivatives, and from dollar dominance in international trade. Neither source is immune to a violent adjustment.

With spreads on EM sovereign debt at historically tight levels, investors are looking elsewhere to generate alpha. One cutting-edge strategy is to invest in illiquid securities. Hedge funds, in particular, are turning increasingly to these esoteric assets. But the approach is not for the faint-hearted. Sudip Roy reports.

The Saudi Arabian banking sector is waking up from its regulation-induced slumber.

And variance swap strategies remain popular.

The weight of specialized fund and private equity money now chasing infrastructure assets means that everything and anything is up for grabs. Louise Bowman reports.

As the dust settles on the epic $21.9 billion capital-raising from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the long-term lessons of the deal – the first simultaneous offer on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges – are being considered.

Merger arbitrage has been one of the top-performing strategies of 2006. Paulson & Company is a leading light in merger arbitrage, with well-honed skills in both long and short strategic approaches to deals. Helen Avery reports.