Big names move to buyout firms; private equity ‘has money to burn’.

Gap between onshore and offshore exposed; Hong Kong dim sum market in doubt.

Market and currency turmoil weigh on growth; financial and stock market reforms needed.

Concerns remain for Chicago, Illinois and Pennsylvania; Puerto Rico’s ballooning debt contained.

Fears of a 1980s-style debt crisis in emerging markets are overblown. But to clear the miasma of statistics, investors would do as well to understand the sentiment of their peers as well as the credit fundamentals of their investments.

It is going to be a bumpy ride for Asia and other commodity-producing economies this year.

The latest market turmoil could finally persuade emerging market countries to become more proactive in communicating with global financial markets.

The country’s banking sector has staged a remarkable comeback over the past two years and is well-positioned to support growth and investment. Whether or not that will materialize, however, depends on its politicians.

The bailout of Parex Banka at the height of the financial crisis helped push Latvia into deep recession. Today, reborn as Citadele and with a global all-star cast of owners, the bank is well on the way to becoming a national asset.

Qatar Financial Centre always wanted to be different to the other Middle East hubs. But the model was confused. Now it aims to be the engine for the broader transformation of the country’s economy.

Saudi Aramco is a behemoth: the world’s most valuable company and the lifeblood of the Saudi state and royal family. Bankers and investors have mixed emotions over plans to list it; this could be a huge opportunity, but is it feasible?

The Basel Committee on Bank Supervision released long-awaited guidance on a new capital regime for market risk in January. It did not, however, solve the mystery of which bank was the outlier in a study of the potential effect of a change in trading risk evaluation.

The film of The Big Short provides a welcome reminder of the glory days of Morgan Stanley’s fixed income franchise, when Howie Hubler managed to lose $9 billion on botched structured credit tranche trades.

The January fall in emerging market currencies, the exodus of foreign capital and a global bear market in equities all point to a new financial crisis. How China reacts to this threat holds the key for emerging markets.

Shareholders should be as worried by modest returns at the American market leader as by outright losses at Deutsche and other struggling European investment banks.

Investors focus on exposure to oil; banks see no contagion yet.

Portugal’s central bank had very few options when it decided to bail-in senior bondholders of Novo Banco at the end of last year. The move has dismayed investors and may breach the ECB’s newly introduced bail-in powers. Have years of effort in developing a bank resolution regime already gone up in smoke? And what does it all mean for a deeply shaken market for bank funding?

The Bank of Portugal’s decision to transfer just five tranches of bonds on December 29 was not made in isolation. Bankers close to the situation in Portugal say two previous situations influenced the central bank’s thinking.

Distrust in official data coincides with hedge-fund closures, including Nevsky Capital.