Investors welcome a market-friendly deal achieved with the minimum of fuss

New launch is sign of growing sophistication in fixed income investing

Iran's strong headline economic figures are out of kilter with the weakness of its private sector and feeble foreign direct investment flows. Can the authorities boost private sector growth and investment inflows so long as influential ruling groups remain suspicious of free enterprise?

Bankers see little chance of a global bond issue

What connects the world's best borrowers in 2005? Their ability to secure attractive funding through innovative structures or reaching out to new markets, often when the conditions are not in their favour.

New services could help solve operational risk issues in credit derivatives

Real estate investment trusts have helped to drive development of the asset class in countries such as the US and Japan. Now a European-wide market is ready for take off. Helen Avery reports.

Regulation:

It's not just General Electric which is getting all puffed up about green technology through its Egoimagination drive.

UK junior market AIM could be hampered by tight interpretations of EU rules on what constitutes a public offer

Management of emerging markets lender Standard Chartered Bank is putting its own advertising slogan, 'We go the distance so you go further', to good internal use in its efforts to integrate its largest acquisition, the US$3.4 billion deal with Korea First Bank (KFB).

Government hopes delay will not harm investment drive

Auna set for LBO record Three consortia of private equity firms are expected to submit bids of around e12 billion for Spanish telecoms operator Auna. If one succeeds, the deal would be Europe's largest-ever leveraged buyout and the biggest globally since KKR bought RJR Nabisco in 1989.

The chairman of the SEC throws his weight behind Sarbanes-Oxley

Between sessions on liquidity, capital issues and the future of credit markets, the big issues of a conference near Malaga in Spain were played out around the poker table

Deutsche and Wharton announce Delta

Regulator makes new attempt to solve 'legal person' shares overhang

Algeria: bank reform picks up pace

Other banks' proprietary platforms need to pick up market share fast

Mizuho has announced plans to establish a private banking company in Japan. The 70-person unit, Mizuho Private Wealth Management Company, will provide consulting services and various personalised financial products for clients with 500 million yen or more in assets. It will be a tough market to crack, however. A private banking market in Japan has never fully taken off despite attempts by both foreign and domestic players. Wealthy Japanese have tended to keep their money on deposit, while the banks have not focused on customer service. Even at a retail banking level, only now is there evidence of a service-oriented banking culture, led by Shinsei and Tokyo Star.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association held a gala dinner in London in May to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

It is not just American businessmen and tourists filling the seats of Thai Airways' new non-stop route between Bangkok and New York.

Some banks are already seeing an uptake from new buy-side clients

Stock markets are unimpressed by president's pro-business reforms

Investors snapped up the bonds on rarity value, as Germany went for an early deal

Investor sentiment has soured dramatically over the past two months, with more fund managers now expecting growth to slacken and corporate profits to fall. A Merrill Lynch survey of 300 fund managers indicates that a net 32% are now negative about growth prospects and that a net 34% are negative about the corporate profit outlook, a significant turnround from March when investors were positive about growth and corporate profits by a net 11% and 4% respectively. Expectations have not been this low since 2001.

Despite a more uncertain rate and credit environment, new issuers and investors continue to enter the covered bond market. As the boundaries between traditional and structured products blur, Asia and the US are the targets.

FX settlement system CLS has responded to its member board's request to investigate the feasibility of adding a matching and netting facility for non-eligible currencies (NECs) and the settlement of FX option premiums, non-deliverable forwards (NDFs), interest rate swaps and credit derivatives. CLS Bank Settlement Members have been meeting with CLS to thrash out the design and the attractiveness of the inclusion of these more complicated FX-related products. While use of FX derivatives has grown, some banks have voiced concerns that the pace of growth is stretching their back offices. "FX players are now being squeezed between the conflicting forces of growth and the need to tidy up their operations," says Jonathan Butterfield, executive vice-president at CLS. "The optimal way to do this is to establish a level of standardization and use of common infrastructures collectively."

Negative returns

Leveraged buyouts and auto company problems are taxing the minds of bond investors, but there's a more insidious form of event risk they should be wary of. Company executives, under pressure from boards and active investors including hedge funds, are starting to engage in financial engineering to try to boost their stock price. Bondholders are set to lose out. Antony Currie reports.