Saxo Bank is launching a year-long competition called World TopInvestor on February 19 for its white-label partners’ clients. The move follows a similar game held by its Portuguese white label partner, DIF Broker, last year. The competition is open to qualified, experienced investors familiar with the risk involved in trading in various different assets and the winner will be given a mandate to manage what Saxo says is a significant portfolio on its SaxoTrader platform.

Russell Investment Group has launched a range of global indices that apply the same criteria to all companies regardless of size and the country in which they are listed.

Hedge fund Cabezon Capital focuses on the currency and liquidity strategies of emerging market governments pursuing export-led growth. Helen Avery speaks to Michael Dooley, the fund’s co-founder and head of research.

Asia... start your engines.

Much of the singsong about the advantages to Euronext of the merger with the NYSE sounds flat.

Which are the financings that defined the capital markets in 2006? This year, Euromoney recognizes half a dozen deals that will for ever be associated with the previous 12 months.

Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs comprise the new three-firm bulge bracket in the debt markets. That’s what respondents to our three key customer polls in 2006 tell us.

"Misguided hedge fund guy seeks $2,000 friend with benefits - 36

“I think we need to improve even more on the customer front. Customers are listening to what you say in terms of capital structure, liability management as a whole and then you can focus on one specific topic, one particular product. But you need to have people fully aligned”

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

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

Institutional investors adopt the 130/30 rule.

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

Leading Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital has added yet another banker to its already impressive staff, which has extensive investment banking experience in emerging European capital markets.

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.

Activist shareholders have a bad name. Helen Avery brought together a group of hedge funds to uncover the positive role that such investors can play.

Asset managers, pension funds and derivatives specialists across Europe need to be aware of the potential changes in Danish ALM activity. Several Danish pension funds and life insurers have written to the Danish Financial Services Authority suggesting that they be allowed to change their discount curve for liabilities from Danish government bonds. Christine Joseph-Haller looks at the implications for the euro and Danish krone fixed-income markets.

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.

Ivan Ritossa, Barclays Capital’s global head of FX, has assumed responsibility for the bank’s rates business in Asia. His new remit includes fixed income, and commodity and equity-linked products, run out of the bank’s Singapore office. A Barclays spokesperson said: "Asia contains the fastest-growing economies in the world. Developing and building our business across this diverse region is fundamental to the global growth plans of the firm. Since joining the firm in 2002, Ivan has transformed the foreign exchange business into a world-class performer."

Only strong M&A-related capital-raising will allow hybrid debt volumes to remain firm in 2007.

The battle to persuade clients that active currency management is a key tool has been so convincingly won that overlay is now being transformed by leverage and the search for alpha. But what are the risks?

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

Japan seems a strange place to start an independent research firm. Costs are high, and the market, although large, is dominated by domestic mega banks and the international bulge bracket. For Rupert Eastwood, CEO and co-founder of Japaninvest Group, that is precisely the point.

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

The bank has changed. Now Green and Geoghegan’s challenge is to manage investors’ different expectations.

Demand for Islamic finance products is high. At last supply is starting to meet investors’ needs. The challenge for the industry is to ensure that the market’s infrastructure develops sufficiently quickly so that more companies and entities continue to embrace Shariah-compliant techniques. And on the following pages Euromoney profiles the winners of the latest ­Islamic finance awards.

Benchmark multi-family CMBS deal refinanced after just over a year.

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

Albania has something of an image problem abroad. What scant coverage the country has received in the international press in the past has almost universally been negative in tone, focusing on drugs-trafficking, Mafia shootings, banking scandals and political mismanagement. It’s hardly the ideal news recipe if you’re looking to attract much-needed investment to a country often dubbed the poor man of Europe.