Any football supporter will tell you that the team is usually only as good as the person who runs it. The same applies to investment banking. The CEO sets the agenda for the entire firm. It is a highly pressurized role that will culminate in their removal if the team they manage fails to perform. And the performance that ultimately matters for bank CEOs is to deliver returns to shareholders.

This year more Americans will file for bankruptcy than graduate from college or file for divorce.

It’s good to see that the top men in the multilaterals are devoting time to looking after the interests of the man in the street and not just governments. Or so the Nigerian 419-style scamsters would like to have us believe.

Demand for mortgages and consumer loans from low-income borrowers will provide a big opportunity for private sector lenders, according to a new report by Merrill Lynch called The Merrill Lynch guide to emerging mortgage and consumer credit markets. The bank says currently government agencies provide a large chunk of this kind of finance. But in the long run demand will only be satisfied by building capital market instruments, such as residential mortgage-backed securities and mortgage covered bonds. The bank reckons Colombia has the strongest RMBS market in Latin America.

Citing evidence from what he admits is a limited study, TABB Group partner Robert Iati feels that the decision of many of the leading FX banks to invest heavily in their own trading portals has left the multi-bank aggregating platforms looking vulnerable.

Banks’ predictions for 2007 are remarkably similar to those of a year ago.

Mexico’s exchange calls into question the point of recent liability management trades.

The region’s equity markets are beginning to outshine debt and M&A.

There are generally clear advance indications of ECB interest rate increases. However, the precise dimensions of change over the longer term are harder to predict, leaving market adjustments trailing.

A smash in the US, but tax advantages are not available for Europe.

Arne Hassel has joined the $10 billion London-based currency and alternatives manager Millennium Global Investments as managing director of the funds of hedge funds business. Hassel was previously CIO of funds of hedge funds at Coronation Fund Managers, before which he was head of hedge fund strategies at GSAM in London.

The UK has been eagerly awaiting the introduction of tax-free real estate investment trusts for years, so when the legislation permitting them finally took effect at the start of 2007 nine of the UK’s largest property companies were ready to make the switch.

Summary table of top banks, with quick links to more related content on euromoney.com

At Euromoney’s Paris Forum held at the end of 2006, the chief executive of BNP Paribas, Baudouin Prot, outlined some of the challenges facing major financial institutions. Principal among these is the growth and globalization of the banking industry. The interview was conducted by Chris Garnett, Euromoney’s director of conferences. Read or listen to it here.

RBC Capital Markets announced the completion of two of the first ever rouble-denominated bonds since the rouble became fully convertible.

According to Clontarf Capital: "The global tide of liquidity shows no sign of abating and this will mean another brutal year for short-sellers. For the past three years only auto-parts suppliers have been sure shorts and we believe that this may be a year to pause with long/short funds - at least new entrants, or those managers with little meaningful experience on the short side. After a few years of quiet launches, it could be that the hedge funds’ sibling long-only products are the ‘idea whose time has come’."

Gulf institutions maintain their dominance of Euromoney’s rankings as growth continues for third successive year. Morris Helal reports.

UK retailer Marks & Spencer is to partly plug the £704 million ($1.4 billion) hole in its UK defined benefit pension scheme by redeeming its 2001 Amethyst Finance sale and leaseback CMBS deal. The properties backing the CMBS have a current estimated book value of £550 million. UK supermarket group J Sainsbury exploited the value of its property portfolio in early 2006 by securitizing half of its property portfolio and injecting the proceeds into its pension fund. M&S plans to put its properties into a partnership in which the pension scheme will hold the interest. The cost of unwinding Amethyst and setting up the new partnership will be £30 million to £35 million.

Two surveys of hedge fund managers’ portfolio valuation policies have revealed a lack of standardization, highlighting a need for stricter valuation procedures, particularly when dealing with hard-to-value assets.

Jochen Andritzky’s book demonstrates the importance of analysing CDS prices alongside bond prices in assessing the likelihood of sovereign default and expected recovery values. Felix Salmon examines the evidence.

Some investors are due to reduce holdings in favour of single-strategy peers.

Japan is slow to adopt financial market innovations, and algorithmic trading is no exception.

Summary table of top banks, with quick links to more related content on euromoney.com

“Global credit spreads are tight and will likely stay tight as long as our forecast for a global soft landing proves true and global liquidity doesn’t suddenly evaporate.”

The “marriage made in heaven” (as it has been described in the financial press) between yield-hungry Asian investors and perpetual bond-issuing Latin American companies turned hellish in May 2006.

Asia... start your engines.

Recent research belies the image of hedge fund activists as short-termists that destroy corporate value rather than create it.

A European transaction-cost-analysis survey conducted by business school Edhec and commissioned by HSBC came up with figures in January that show just how unprepared many fund managers are to meet the requirements of the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid) and the best execution requirements of their clients.

Euromoney’s FX correspondent’s body took days to recover from the huge amount of cholesterol he consumed at a lunch in January with Saxo Bank’s Rob Gray (pictured), who chose to go to Simpsons Tavern in Cornhill after winning the online Christmas quiz of Euromoney’s foreign exchange column, The Weekly FiX. Simpsons is a British institution, where if you asked for the vegetarian option, the poor old waitress would have a heart attack. You can’t book a table and you have to sit on benches, taking pot luck on who will be chomping away next to you. In the old days, it was a great place for getting the odd nudge and a wink and picking up some decent stock tips. Insider trading rules and a reluctance to go to lunch, plus the wholesale move of banks from the City to the horror known as Canary Wharf, have put paid to that.

BBA writes to UK Treasury over ‘informal actions of US officials’.