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

Watch out Standard Chartered: a potential competitor might have been born. London-based investment bank Medicap, 100% owned by BMCE, a Moroccan bank, launched in November, and intends to focus on one of Standard Chartered’s specialities: Africa.

Deutsche Bank has hired Dierk Reuter as its new global head of e-commerce and algorithmic trading. Reuter was previously a managing director at Goldman Sachs in its equity algo business, although he also has extensive knowledge of FX. He was seconded to FXall by Goldman Sachs as its original chief technology officer when the multi-bank portal launched.

Infrastructure investment is not without risk. Even the US has found this; the collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis in August led to the realization that much of the country’s ageing infrastructure needs refurbishment. But flows of new money bring their own problems. Investment skills and experience remain the pre-eminent qualities required to succeed.

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.

With the dollar in seeming free fall, the Gulf Cooperation Council is set to discuss the wisdom of keeping its member states’ currencies pegged to the ailing currency.

Japan’s Nomura booked a ¥73 billion ($621 million) loss from its residential mortgage-backed securities unit as the company announced its exit from the US RMBS market. The bank described the move as part of a general reduction in its US activities that will cut the number of employees by 400 to 900. Although the loss is small in comparison with the billion-dollar losses at some American banks, it is the largest yet reported by a major Japanese institution as a result of the sub-prime problem. In a statement, Nomura president and CEO Nobuyuki Koga acknowledged "disappointing results" in the US RMBS market but said that the bank had "moved decisively to deal with the issue and had avoided further and protracted losses by taking firm and immediate action".

Goldman Sachs has appointed Beatrice Sánchez as regional manager for its private wealth management business in Latin America. She will join the US bank next spring from HSBC Private Bank. Sánchez will be based in Miami.

Those looking to harm Ms Whitney may want to think twice.

Despite all the jawboning over the past few years about succession planning, banks seem woefully unprepared if they are forced to jettison a flailing chief executive because of cauldron-like shareholder pressure.

While India and China look the best long-term bets, short-term gains could be easier to find elsewhere in the region.

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.

Many investors had been positioning themselves for an inevitable downturn in the leveraged finance market long before this summer’s dislocation. But, ironically, the underwriting abuses of the past few years mean that they could still face a long wait before any meaningful opportunities arise. Louise Bowman reports.

Markit purchase of IIC could herald creation of a global credit derivatives index.

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

Market remains open but substantial new-issue premiums return.

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

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.

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

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

The sinking dollar – not ­the sub-prime fallout – is the big hurdle for India’s most buoyant sectors.

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.

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.

The scramble for Africa just became institutionalized. Anyone who thought that the latest round of deals in Africa – led mainly by the Chinese – would be limited to the commodity sector had better revise their views. Two developments in the past month show that the Chinese are willing, even desperate, to take stakes in financial institutions on the continent. All indications suggest that direct investment inflows into Africa, some $39 billion in 2006, according to Unctad, the UN trade and development agency, are likely to be much higher for 2007. Some analysts expect the figure to hit $100 billion by 2010. The first deal, announced on October 31, is a partnership between Nigeria’s United Bank of Africa and China Development Bank. Details on the level of credit available to UBA are not being disclosed but it is understood to be significant. UBA feels it has stolen a march on its rivals and done the region a favour as well. "This partnership will contribute to strengthening of the economic cooperation between China and Nigeria and indeed the sub-region," says Tony Elumelu, chief executive of UBA. "The long-term funding gap in Africa is the highest in the world and this partnership will seek to close that gap."

Two of Kazakhstan’s leading companies are poised to fully test investor sentiment towards the central Asian state in the coming weeks, with big transactions in the debt and equity markets.

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

US buyout firm Carlyle Group has expanded its Warsaw-based central and eastern European team with the appointment of three professionals. Janusz Guy has been named a managing director, and Aleksander Kacprzyk and Piotr Nocen come in as directors. They join the team established and led by managing director Ryszard Wojtkowski.

The Spanish savings bank sector’s days of annual loan growth of more than 20% are over as construction wobbles and cédulas are tarnished by the international credit crunch. Cajas need to re-examine their funding strategies and business plans, writes Peter Koh.

The closing months of 2007 are proving to be full of intrigue for watchers of the Japanese banking industry, with the year’s two biggest M&A deals experiencing setbacks while smaller banks look to forge new alliances.

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.

Latin American banks are well positioned to endure the credit crunch and a potential global economic slowdown, according to regional specialists. So far, the banking system has weathered the storm and analysts expect it to continue to do so.

Hong Kong investors have become happily addicted to China’s flip-flop attitude to the so-called "through train" programme, under which mainland investors will in theory be allowed to buy stocks listed in the former UK colony.

Asset-backed securities not troubled by US sub-prime problems.

A study by Integrity Research Associates shows a disparity between research conducted by traditional buy-side firms and their hedge fund counterparts that could explain the latter’s outperformance.

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

The Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile, on November 10 ended on a heated note after the Spanish king told Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, to "shut up".

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.

800,000,000,000 the total dollar value of ECM issuance so far this year. The figure, a record, was achieved on the back of 5,350 transactions. Global convertibles issuance so far this year at $159.6 billion has already exceed 2006’s convertibles total, and global IPO and follow-on volumes are not far off from reaching the total of all ECM issuance in 2006.

There’s a lot to be said for a monetary union for north America.

The London and Tokyo stock exchanges this November announced a joint venture to create a new junior market in Tokyo based on the LSE’s highly successful AIM model.

Argentina’s capital markets could be about to take off, as more than 20 companies line up to list on the Buenos Aires stock exchange.

The success of Trade Ideas, a platform developed by a consortium of investment banks for distributing trading ideas to their clients, shows that trading ideas are becoming an increasingly important element of the brokerage service that buy-side clients are willing to pay for.

Africa’s banking and capital markets are showing encouraging signs of maturity.

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.

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.

Bank of New York Mellon is to acquire Brazilian asset management company ARX Capital Management. ARX has $2.6 billion in Brazilian multi-strategy, long/short and long-only investment strategies. Morgan Stanley has added to its growing slate of hedge fund investments, and has bought a minority stake in Traxis Partners, a hedge fund founded by former employee Barton Biggs. And RAB Capital has bought a 20% stake in Tokyo-headquartered hedge fund firm Prestige Asset Management. Last month it acquired Hong Kong-based hedge fund Pi Investment Management.

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

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

Issuers opt for convertibles and opportunistic deals.

The once-unthinkable news that super-senior CDO risk could be vulnerable to downgrade has been very bad news for the monoline guarantors as well as the banks. Most vulnerable to write-downs as a result of wrapping these tranches is Ambac, with $29.2 billion exposure to US ABS CDOs. MBIA has $19.3 billion and XLCA $16.1 billion. However, Moody’s reckons that the likelihood of any of these firms facing a capital shortfall is unlikely (MBIA) or moderate (Ambac and XLCA). The rating agencies deem Natixis-owned CIFG to be at the greatest risk of facing a capital shortfall. The firm has a $4 billion exposure to the CDO market. Of the big four firms, FSA is the most comfortably positioned, with a mere $364 million exposure to US ABS CDOs.

Citi, Bank of America and JPMorgan will fail to persuade several banks to participate in the initial idea of a master-liquidity enhancement conduit.

Standard & Poor’s finally lowered its long-term corporate credit rating on airports operator BAA to sub-investment grade on November 21. The move comes a full eight months after the agency’s own declared deadline for downgrading the credit. S&P finally acted because of BBA’s "protracted refinancing", the details of which were revealed in Euromoney’s April issue.

Industry veteran Albert Maasland has been appointed as Saxo Bank’s European chief operating officer. Previously, Maasland was head of business development, e-commerce at Standard Chartered. He has also held senior roles at Deutsche Bank and Chase Manhattan. "I’ve had a great time at Standard. It’s a really good bank, concentrating on what it does well. But I’m looking forward to starting at Saxo. It is hard to overestimate the impact that Saxo Bank are having in the financial services industry and their future growth potential and I am keen to be part of that winning team," says Maasland.

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.

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.

Alfa Bank has become the first privately owned Russian bank to raise overseas funding in the post-credit crunch era.

Rumours are rife that quant funds stumbled again in November. If they are to thrive in the future, they need to learn from these mistakes.

Pakistan has become a country that generates two types of stories: one positively glowing, extolling the recently healthy financial markets and rising foreign direct investment; one wholly negative, after the country’s latest skirmish with one or more of rising militancy, dictatorship, government strife or old-fashioned bankruptcy.

Benjamin Jacquard has been appointed global head of structured credit markets at Calyon, replacing Loïc Fery, formerly head of credit markets, who left the bank in September. Fery was forced out, along with several other senior officials in Calyon’s credit markets business, after a $250 million loss in credit indices trading. With a new leader, the French bank will hope that its newly named structured credit markets business will fare better. Jacquard ran the correlation book and was head of credit structuring at Bank of America before joining Calyon as global head of credit market trading six months ago.