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.

UBS has made its global head of debt capital markets, Suneel Kamlani, chief of staff of the investment bank.

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

Peru has set up the equivalent of Fannie Mae, reflecting the growing importance of mortgages in the country.

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

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

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

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

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

Given CMC Markets’ success story, it was hardly surprising that the company’s planned initial public offering in the summer of 2006 attracted so much press attention, especially in the UK.

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.

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

The Big Mac index is old hat. Who, in these health-conscious times, buys a Big Mac any more? Instead, please welcome a more pertinent yardstick for our time: the iPod index.

“I guess if Goldman Sachs can’t even read our P/E off a screen then the chances of them being good at the rest of the numbers is pretty low!”

Mergers and acquisitions are the hot topic in Tokyo as corporate Japan shifts into investment mode. And although Japan’s M&A market is flawed, structural changes are slowly under way and global bulge-bracket firms will be the ­ultimate winners. Chris Leahy reports.

Investment banks continued to ride high in 2006 on good fundamentals and the added boost of strong hedge fund and private equity activity, proprietary trading and continuing globalization. Alex Chambers assesses whether they can sustain the good times in 2007.

There are sound reasons why volatility has fallen across asset classes. But a safe bet for 2007 is that it will rise again.

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.

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

OMX bids for Slovenian stock exchange.

"Go to hell"

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.

Mexican fixed-line operator Maxcom almost defaulted on its debt a few years ago. But in December the company successfully returned to the international capital markets, proving that the appetite for Latin American high-yield credits is as strong as ever. Chloe Hayward speaks to CFO José-Antonio Solbes about the company’s turnaround.

Numerical proof of how tough the foreign exchange market was for many participants through the summer of 2006 has been provided by semi-annual volume data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Foreign Exchange Committee and the Bank of England’s FX Joint Standing Committee. According to the FXC, average daily volume in over-the-counter FX instruments in October 2006 totalled $534 billion, 7.5% down on April 2006.

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.

With emerging markets as an asset class hotter than ever, it might be expected that capital flows to them would also be hitting all-time highs. Latin America, however, seems to have been left out of the party somewhat.

Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Ecuador’s long-term foreign currency ratings to CCC from CCC+. S&P also changed the credit rating outlook to stable from positive. The moves follow repeated statements by Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, that the government would fail to make an interest payment on its debt due this month. Last month economy minister Ricardo Patino told investors that the government was considering repaying only 40% of its foreign debt. He added that he expected a debt-restructuring plan to emerge soon. Correa’s government, which came into power in January, believes much of Ecuador’s $11 billion-worth of foreign debt is illegitimate because it was borrowed by military dictatorships that ran the country in the past.

Liability management can be a double-edged sword. Get it right and everyone showers you with plaudits about your relative sophistication as a borrower and how attentive you are to addressing investors’ wants and needs. Get it wrong, however, and your name is quickly mud and the world and his fund manager wife are soon griping about how naive you are and how difficult it will be for you to achieve your funding target for the year if you carry on in a such a cavalier, market-unfriendly manner.

Deutsche Bank’s European securitization research notes the market’s impressive growth rate in Russia in 2006.

Nothing is more likely to cause instability than a long period of stability. And excessive growth of credit and liquidity is a clear warning sign of crashes to come, probably within the next year.