June marks the beginning of the hurricane season in the Caribbean, and every year there’s a chance that any given island will suffer devastating losses to infrastructure, property and life.

Standard & Poor’s has launched the S&P BRIC Shariah Index, aiming to give it a bigger share of the fast-growing Islamic finance market. The new index is designed to cover the largest and most liquid stocks in Brazil, Russia, India and China that meet Shariah law investment criteria and that trade on developed market exchanges – the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Standard & Poor’s already offers Shariah-compliant versions of its most widely used global indices – the S&P 500, the S&P Europe 350 and the S&P Japan 500, as well as the S&P GCC Middle East Shariah Index Series. "The S&P BRIC Shariah Index feeds into the already powerful line-up of Islamic indices launched over the past six months by Standard & Poor’s," says Alka Banerjee, vice-president of Standard & Poor’s Index Services. "Each of the constituents within the S&P BRIC Shariah Index is liquid and completely hedgeable. As a result, we are already seeing clients create mutual funds and structured products based upon the index." To be eligible for inclusion in the S&P BRIC Shariah Index, companies must first be constituents of the S&P/IFCI Index for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Constituents are then screened for Shariah compliance based on proprietary sector and financial ratios. Only those stocks deemed Shariah-compliant are retained for the final universe of the index. All S&P Shariah indices are screened by Ratings Intelligence Partners, a Kuwait consulting company.

Competition for real estate expertise in Europe heats up.

A new generation of CDOs assumes spreads will probably widen.

S&P this June launched the new S&P Pan Asia Shariah Index, a new addition to its Global Shariah Index Series.

As margin lenders to the two struggling Bear Stearns hedge funds High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Master Fund and High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Master Fund scrambled to avert losses in late June, another vehicle with links to the funds was facing up to problems of its own. Everquest Financial, which was recently formed by Bear Stearns (and had filed a registration with the SEC on May 9 to list), is one of a raft of new listed permanent capital vehicles that have been investing in the equity and first-loss parts of structured credit investments and been hailed as a vital new source of liquidity in this market.

The storm clouds that were once on the horizon are now overhead.

The sheer size and influence of sovereign wealth funds is attracting attention – not all of it positive.

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.

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.

Who is there to save the day when hedge funds have a blow-up? Why, it’s other hedge funds, which can make a profit clearing up the mess.

A basket approach to pricing currencies could help curb Gulf inflation.

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.

WHAT’S WANTED is quality of products and services, competitive prices, social responsibility and a deep commitment to the environment and ethics – Brazil’s high flyers are a picky lot when they opt for a bank, surveys find. One bank, though, fits the bill better than any other: Banco Itaú. Brazil’s biggest private sector bank delivers not just on these eclectic areas but also in income growth, strong profits and shareholder value for investors. It is the leader in its class not just in Brazil, but a benchmark for all banks in Latin America. Its achievements are recognised by Euromoney’s award for best bank in Latin America. Itaú’s philosophy of listening to the market and giving it the products and services it wants, together with keeping a tight lid on costs, is behind the bank’s ability to produce this balance. Its core philosophy is market-led expansion strategies, not grandiose, management-driven plans. Adaptability, an ability to spot good, organic commercial opportunities, together with a knack for buying and integrating companies flows from that market-driven mind-set. Speed helps, particularly in a market where lumbering government-owned banks are still leading players.

Iceland’s Straumur-Burdarás investment bank has extended its international reach to central and eastern Europe with the acquisition of a 50% stake in Wood & Company, the Prague investment banking boutique house, for an undisclosed sum. Reykjavik-headquartered Straumur has an option to increase its holding to 100% no later than early 2011.

Wall Street investment bankers were agog at the news. Could it really be that Jimmy Quigley, debt capital markets legend and icon of Merrill Lynch’s dominance of the primary bond markets in the 1990s, had become an accountant?

Traders hoping that an uptick in volatility is here to stay should be careful what they wish for.

The buzz surrounding the launch of the new Q-WIXX CDS trading platform suggests that it is one of the most eagerly awaited, and supported, product launches in years.

"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.