Kuwait's central bank has announced new credit facilities for local companies.

The Private Banking and Wealth Management Survey 2009 received 1643 valid votes (1244 'part B' votes, 399 'part A' votes), representing $11.8 trillion of Assets under Management.

The scale of the loss at RBS plus the talk of full nationalization and the circumstances at Merrill Lynch diverted attention from Deutsche Bank. But its losses are perhaps the most disheartening of the three.

The UK Treasury’s latest bank bail-out plan will fail unless it works out what bad assets are worth.

UBS’s chief executive was the first global bank head to tackle the impact of the credit crunch. His actions may have saved the bank. Much remains to be done. The future of the firm’s investment bank is in doubt. And so will Rohner’s own position be, if he doesn’t quickly return the bank to profit and shut the door on outflows in its wealth management franchise. Clive Horwood reports

"The $1.2 million reported in the press was for the renovation of my office, two conference rooms and a reception area. The expenses were incurred over a year ago in a very different environment"

Claims of special access to the best managers and extraordinary due-diligence skills are not rooted in reality.

The resolution of one Latin America banking crisis in the early 1980s could provide lessons for today’s policymakers.

Beleaguered European corporates can only dream of such quick and easy access to equity capital.

In a high-profile move, Grigory Marchenko has been appointed as chairman of the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) for the second time, replacing his successor, Anvar Saidenov.

"The negative net revenues for FICC in the quarter were due to losses from investments, including corporate debt and private and public equities, and trading in credit products. These results were adversely impacted by unprecedented weakness across the broader credit markets..."

"Return to profitability in 2009 is our most important priority". The bank’s chief executive details his vision for a new UBS

Sales of distressed real estate assets in Mexico could total more than $10 billion this year. “Mexico is very interesting at the moment,” says a local portfolio manager. “There are four big companies that are struggling that have big real estate portfolios in the country. Now there is an expectation that they will have to sell some of these assets.”

GLG Partners has taken on Kaveh Sheibani and Julian Harvey, two of the founders of London-based event-driven fund Pendragon. GLG will become the investment manager of the funds and accounts at Pendragon Capital.

Chile is on track to weather the financial crisis and avoid a recession. “Chile managed the boom years incredibly well and now they have the funds to help smooth the financial cycles and work through this crisis. We have a pretty favourable outlook on Chile for 2009,” says Casey Reckman, associate director in Fitch’s Latin American sovereign group.

The CME is expanding its international incentive programmes, which also cover FX products. The programmes will include a simplified fee structure and run until December 31 2010.

The Central Bank of Nigeria tightened its foreign exchange management on January 19, moving from a wholesale to a retail Dutch auction system. Applications for international currency must therefore now be deal-specific.

The fallen of Wall Street have a new way to lift their spirits. Apparently, New York bankers’ latest craze is hypnotism.

In the second part of Euromoney’s foreign exchange debate, which took place in late 2008, industry experts consider the future for the business. There is still cause for optimism, although inflation remains a big unknown and there are real fears of governments’ ability to sustain debt levels.

"I’m a new kind of thug with a Washington buzz ‘coz dealing debt pays better than dealing drugs." Watch the video here.

Paulson & Co and Hong Kong financial group Sun Hung Kai Financial are to launch a distressed asset investment fund that will focus on financial companies.

HFR data reveal that $152 billion of capital was withdrawn by hedge fund investors in the fourth quarter of 2008 – the largest withdrawal in a quarter on record. Estimates that hedge fund assets would reach $2.25 trillion by 2010 now seem far too optimistic. HFR estimates that the industry at present has $1.4 trillion in assets. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index fell by 18.3% for all of 2008, only the second calendar-year decline since 1990.

Cost savings accelerate move towards independent administrators.

Consolidation among investment banks has had a big impact on the equity capital markets league table results in 2008 and will do so again in 2009.

The UK Treasury is understood to be considering the establishment of a conduit-style fund that would source investment directly from institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies to fund its infrastructure investment programme. The UK government would own the conduit and take the first-loss risk in the vehicle. Management of the conduit would be outsourced to a third party – insiders suggest that one of the monoline guarantors is being considered. The conduit could be launched in the next three to six months.

Key numbers from the equity capital markets in 2008 include $257.4 billion, the value of equity raised by financial sector issuers, accounting for 41% of total ECM volume of $634.4 billion. That’s up from just 11%, the financial sector’s share of new issues in 2007. In 2007, total global ECM volume was $943.7 billion

According to analysts at JPMorgan, there is little certainty among all the doom, gloom and despondency in the financial markets. But although few people can confidently predict the outcome of the global financial crisis, JPMorgan believes it can be relatively sure that 2009 will be a year of less leverage and more regulation.

News that China experienced a severe foreign exchange outflow in the fourth quarter of 2008 came as a major surprise to most analysts and left them searching explanations. According to an initial report written by Stephen Green, Standard Chartered’s head of research for China, the unexplained outflows could have been as much as $240 billion, a figure he described as “a very big, very scary number”.

This year is not set to be one of economic recovery – the financial assets that are cheap are cheap for a very good reason, and it’s not a propitious one.

The huge fraud underlines the crucial role of hedge fund administrators and independent prime brokers. An SEC that’s more au fait with hedge funds would also help. Neil Wilson reports.