Decisions by two leading banks to allow clients to post bids and offers on their platforms call into question the need for multi-bank portals.

Neil Wilson, editorial director at HedgeFund Intelligence, argues that there is little substance to the conspiracy theories that dog private equity.

As part of Deutsche Bank’s recent expansion initiatives for its overall prime brokerage business, the firm has launched a hedge fund consultancy.

Head appointed of a new strategic solutions group.

Competition for real estate expertise in Europe heats up.

Foreign bank interest in Turkey’s fast-growing banking market shows no sign of slowing down, with ING of the Netherlands the latest new entrant into the country’s increasingly cosmopolitan financial services sector. In June, ING signed a contract with the Armed Forces Pension Fund (Oyak), to acquire its subsidiary, Oyak Bank.

The switch to lower minimum price increments that came into effect in the US listed equity options market in February is making the market more efficient, according to a report. Earlier this year, the US options industry switched its minimum price increment from $0.05 (nickels) to $0.01 (pennies) in 13 key option classes under a pilot programme mandated by the SEC. The switch to penny pricing is already having a positive impact for users of equity options, according to Aite Group, a US consultancy firm.

The UK’s Prudential and Bank Aljazira, Saudi Arabia’s smallest bank, have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote takaful or Islamic insurance in the kingdom.

When it’s Euromoney’s awards season, our journalists get to feel what it must be like to be the client of an investment bank for a few weeks at least, as the world’s leading firms wheel out their big guns, and big pitches, to secure one of our prestigious awards.

HVB has continued the build-up of its FX business with several senior-level sales appointments, including Mark Sweeting, who it enticed from ABN Amro in London. The bank also hired Toby Angel from JPMorgan, Peter Graham from Pru-Bache and Sue Rasmussen from ANZ.

Hedge fund research group HFR says that in response to enquiries from investors, it is launching an index of hedge funds run by women and minorities called the Diversity Index. Since January 2003, the number of minority and women-owned hedge funds in the HFR database has doubled to more than 100. HFR president Ken Heinz says that requests have come from institutional investors that are required to invest a certain percentage with minority groups. On a historical basis, from January 2003 to May 2007, the index would have produced an annualized net return of 11.26%.

Corporate treasurers are keeping a close eye on the new regulations that will impact on cash management. The Payment Services Directive is due this autumn – another step forward – yet the timetable for Sepa is still vague. Even identifying the benefits of the changes is a matter of hot debate. Julian Marshall reports.

"OK, so I screwed up. Even my COO called me up and said: "Great pitch mate, really compelling – shame about the logo on the top of the page"

Lorenzo Isla has been appointed head of the structured credit business at BBVA. Based in Spain, Isla will build out a business that will structure, invest in and distribute structured credit risk. Isla worked for Barclays Capital for the past three years where he was head of the structured credit research team. He starts at the end of August and will work from Barcelona and Madrid.

Banking analysts are starting to ring alarm bells about Brazil – in recent months there has been a rapid increase in consumer lending by local banks, but this came hand in hand with a large increase in the non-performing loan market.

Move helps normalize relations with international financial community.

Ask any foreign partner involved in a Sino-foreign public-private partnership (PPP) deal and they will tell you that they are far from straightforward to complete. So plans to establish, fund and build China’s first fully digital world-class hospital are not going to be easy.

"Never invest unless there is blood on the streets," runs the maxim from Jacob Rothschild that adorns the cover of the sales presentation from First Persian Equity Fund. Investors in the €300 million three-year closed fund, launched on June 15 and closing at the end of July, will presumably have scented blood on the fledgling Tehran Stock Exchange where years of political turmoil have kept valuations low. Volumes on the TSE have more than doubled in the past three months, while the forecast P/E ratio of five for 2007 is less than half that of Iran’s neighbours.

S&P stance tempers optimism.

Emerging markets remain the primary driver of hedge fund returns for 2007 so far, but all of HFI’s indices continue to outperform the MSCI index in the long term.

Latin America’s largest issuers have for a while been competing on pretty much a level playing field with their competitors in fully developed countries. That’s important for Brazilian miner Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, which in the wake of its acquisition of Canada’s Inco is now one of the world’s four largest mining companies, alongside BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Anglo American.

In June, investors began to reject low returns on subordinated structures such as PIK toggle notes from riskier issuers. It will be tougher for sponsors to pile more debt on their already leveraged acquisitions. But public company managers aren’t free from the private equity threat.

As covered bond markets continue to thrive worldwide, it appears that the demands of ratings agencies might be becoming a stumbling block.

Proxy season in Japan is in full swing, with hundreds of companies holding annual general meetings at the end of June, often on the same date. There is nothing new in that: Japanese companies began clustering shareholder meetings in this way years ago to avoid extortion by yakuza (Japan’s criminal gangs), who would threaten disruptive action unless they were paid off.

Sub-prime-induced volatility was cited as the reason for the withdrawal of a five-year and 10-year euro-denominated transaction by Arcelor. The lead managers – Calyon, Citi, Commerzbank and RBS – sent out a terse statement saying that the borrower would return when stability returned.

The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong announced in June that it would be "streamlining and simplifying" the licensing process for hedge fund managers with immediate effect. Alexa Lam, the SFC’s executive director of intermediaries and investment products, said: "These initiatives will make the licensing process easier for fund managers and more particularly for overseas hedge fund managers. They are not intended to lower our regulatory requirements because we recognize that these contribute to Hong Kong’s reputation among investors as being a jurisdiction in which appropriate standards are insisted upon among its market participants."

As the managers of the two Bear Stearns high-grade hedge funds that have attracted such unwelcome publicity over the past month squirm in the spotlight, they must be wondering where they went wrong.

Oil firms Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips have pulled out of Venezuela following president Hugo Chávez’s latest round of nationalizations, in which he proposed huge increases in state participation in projects run by the two US companies and four others.

Big potential seen in mobile communications and financial services.

As some banks – and a tiny few aspirant young bankers – have realized, there’s good business to be built in the out-of-fashion traditional investment-grade debt capital markets.