Near record bets against single currency; Banks road test Greek exit

Press offensive launched; Q&A faux pas

Banks are turning to the covered bond market to replace prohibitively expensive senior unsecured funding, fuelling anxious investors’ concerns over encumbrance levels. But should they be looking closer at claims elsewhere on the balance sheet?

The demise of MF Global shows that, more than three years after Lehman, financial watchdogs remain miles off the pace. But there is a solution.

Risk from a large dealer failure; Window dressing of exposure common

Gas exploitation set to reduce US deficit; SWFs will have less influence on dollar’s value

Sales and trading volumes slump in third quarter but CVA masks true extent of damage.

Rebuilding Europe’s banks will take a long time and cost a fortune. Ireland, which has done more than any other country to rebuild and right size its banking system, offers important lessons for this process.

Politicians and market participants, seeing investors turn their backs on the EFSF and abandon the European government bond markets, are pressing the ECB to save the day and increase its buying. That will require a dramatic change of heart. And could an already stressed ECB balance sheet even cope with the demands that such a programme would entail?

Talk of a Chinese property bubble and potential crash is misleading. The country’s real estate sector is as varied as China itself. But what unites Chinese property investors, and the government, is concerns about the pace at which building continues, prices are falling and the extent of exposure in a growing shadow banking sector.

The near-term dangers in emerging markets remain high, even assuming a breakthrough in the eurozone crisis – and emerging Europe is most at risk.

As a seventh bank is taken under state control, Spain faces a race against time to deal with its bad real estate assets before they contaminate the entire banking sector. A bad bank could be the only solution, despite opposition from bankers and politicians.

Banks are under pressure to improve controls against corrupt practices as the UK’s 2011 Bribery Act kicks in and increased use is made of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Does a failed Bund auction last month reveal serious investor concerns about Germany’s credit fundamentals if treaty changes lead to closer fiscal union and put it on the hook for the periphery’s debts?

There is no solution to indebtedness and the inevitable and painful process of deleveraging, so lean back and protect yourself like Muhammad Ali and the US Congress.

Unless crucial links in the chain of contagion are broken and sufficient resources are provided to cover all sovereign liabilities, the eurozone is doomed.

Eurozone-based lenders dominate banking in central and eastern Europe. They have faced writedowns and intransigence in parts of the region. But good profit growth means the CEE is still the central focus of their business.

The allure of public listings has been tarnished by offshore scandals while banks are tightening their lending, forcing CEOs of China’s most dynamic companies to look to new funding sources. Is the offshore IPO market dead?

Universal banks need retail revenues more than ever as investment banking profits plummet. The US industry is facing its biggest challenge as some 7,000 banks battle to make their business models work. The main battleground: deposits.

Foreign exchange provides the best return on equity of any capital markets business. To drive more volume through their franchises, banks need a successful prime brokerage business. For RBS, it holds the key to making up lost ground in foreign exchange.

In the past two years, Deutsche Bank has enjoyed strong growth in its debt capital markets business in Latin America – its eighth autonomous region. Now Bernardo Parnes, its regional chief executive, reveals his plans to take on the competition in equities and M&A.

Microfinance has its problems, but it can drive the economies of developing nations. So what if it wasn’t there? To find out, Euromoney went to the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to meet its lenders and clients.