What does it take to be a pioneer in Corporate Social Responsibility?

Market remains open but substantial new-issue premiums return.

There have been few signs of summer loving in the boardrooms of the bulge-bracket banks, with more and more senior executives being told by angered shareholders and directors "You’re the one that I (don’t) want" as post-sub-prime gloom spreads.

Mid Europa Partners, the leading independent private equity firm focused on central and eastern Europe, has established a notable benchmark for the industry in the region, raising €1.5 billion in commitments for its latest fund, Mid Europa Fund III.

Citi has become the fourth member of the Euromoney top five to enter the retail FX market, following the relatively recent moves of Deutsche Bank, RBS and UBS. Like its peers, Citi has decided to partner with an established player in the retail segment, choosing Saxo Bank to provide some of the technology and client support services.

The sub-prime mortgage market crisis in the US and the associated credit crunch has grabbed most of the headlines in the financial press in recent weeks but Investec Asset Management believes that the much less widely followed economic upturn in Africa merits greater attention in the light of recent global market volatility. Chris Derksen and Roelof Horne, managers of the Africa Funds at IAM and co-authors of a recent report – Why invest in Africa? – highlight the fact that Africa, far from being the investment basket case it was in the 1980s and 1990s, has experienced strong positive trends this decade, with GDP rising faster than the global average and growing free-market economic success.

Spain’s thriving cajas show the rest of Europe the way forward.

The big banks’ Mlec fund might well unblock the present credit log jam. But there’s no escaping the fact that global liquidity has contracted and capital is being repriced upwards.

The problem is with time rather than the legislation or its implementation, say analysts.

Rob Walker has become head of Africa debt capital markets at Standard Bank, South Africa’s biggest banking group. Head of DCM Africa is a newly created position, reflecting the bank’s decision to centralize its Africa DCM coverage in London. "The region deserves a focused approach," says Florian von Hartig, managing director and global DCM head at Standard Bank. Rob Walker moved to London from Gaborone, Botswana, where he led the DCM efforts of Stanbic, as Standard Bank’s branch network in Africa excluding South Africa is known. Also joining Standard Bank’s new London-based Africa DCM team are Gaelle Biteghe, previously a relationship manager at Citi’s corporate and investment banking arm, and Kojo Amoo-Gottfried, an analyst previously at RBS.

Rami Hayek has left his post as global head of equity and fixed-income investments at Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management group to join Credit Suisse. Hayek joins Omar Cordes in the role of co-head of Asia Pacific distribution for asset management, and will be based in Hong Kong.

Citi has merged its equity capital markets and fixed-income capital markets divisions.

Next year a handful of top international banks might expand operations into Guatemala, according to analysts and bankers.

With little to choose between the capabilities of covered bond departments, issuers are granting mandates for different reasons.

Spotted in India: Goldman Sachs’s chairman and CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, enjoying the festivities at a party in New Delhi hosted by Azim Premji, the silver-haired chief of one of the subcontinent’s biggest IT firms, Wipro.

The hoarding of cash by banks is understandable but dangerous.

A study by Ibbotson Associates of the performance of more than 4,000 funds of hedge funds reveals that the smallest 25% under perform the other 75% of funds by more than two percentage points annually because they deliver lower alpha. However, the very largest 5% of funds of hedge funds also slightly under perform other large funds because of capacity constraints.

Currency investment manager Record announced on November 9 plans to list on the London Stock Exchange, with the flotation scheduled to go ahead by the end of the month. The company, set up by former Bank of England economist Neil Record in 1983, was one of the first specialist currency investment management firms. Its decision to list on the London Stock Exchange is believed to be another first by an overlay manager.

A stream of new CLOs is hitting the market – but it is far from business as usual.

Foreign exchange history is littered with the corpses of institutions that have looked at the industry and then decided to enter the market and become significant players. Now the perceived wisdom is that it is harder than ever for someone new to break into even the top 20, let alone the top five.

The strong run of emerging markets equities looks set to continue.

A report commissioned by Deutsche Bank claims that the growth of 130:30 strategies will have a significant impact on the securities lending market. If the strategy attracts the forecast $2 trillion in assets over the next three years, an additional $600 billion in borrowed securities will be needed, says the report. It is hoped that the pressure on the market might transform the opaque and inefficient characteristics of securities lending.

Whether it’s Louis Hagen donning pom-poms and leading a Pfandbrief cheer or a University Challenge-style quiz during the lunch break, every conference needs its memorable moments.

It is one thing to want a sovereign wealth fund but to actually set one up is a long and challenging process, as countries such as Brazil are discovering. Key issues such as infrastructure, hiring people and asset allocation need to be addressed before the investing process can even be considered.

Concerns about lack of transparency force regulator to make participants register directly.

After months of silence and little sign of progress, Project Turquoise, an initiative started by a consortium of seven leading investment banks to create a pan-European multilateral trading facility, has started to take some concrete steps and gain credibility.

After a pause prompted by US-inspired volatility in the global equity markets, Russian companies have resumed new-issue activity, helped by the belief that the strong economic environment in the country will help insulate it from the effects of the fallout from the US.

Concern is growing in Israel over the US MBS portfolio of what until recently was the country’s biggest bank by market capitalization, Hapoalim.

DIC Asset Management – a wholly owned subsidiary of Dubai International Capital, the international investment arm of Dubai Holding; HSBC Bank Middle East; and Oasis International Leasing – has concluded the first close of its MENA Infrastructure Fund with commitments totalling $300 million.

Plus Markets, a London exchange group, has launched a new trading platform and expanded the list of stocks it trades. The new system, provided by OMX, will offer cheap quote-driven trading in 7,500 securities including the stocks of all the companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, 70 AIM-listed companies and several of the most liquid continental stocks. This is in addition to the more than 200 stocks listed on Plus itself. The move has come as a surprise to some market observers, who thought that Plus’s ambitions were confined to small-cap and micro-cap stocks and who believed that Plus was positioning itself as an alternative to AIM.