Bear Stearns has hired a new head of sales for prime brokerage in Europe as part of the US bank’s renewed efforts to build a meaningful presence outside the US. The bank appointed James Shekerdemian, from Lehman Brothers, where he was previously head of the quantitative hedge funds sales group.

"Ours is a top-down, bottoms-up strategy"

Standard & Poor’s has raised the long-term counterparty credit ratings for two of Citadel’s funds from Triple B to BBB+. "The funds’ performance in 2006 was strong and at the top of their peer group based on strong contributions across nearly all of the firm’s nine business units," said S&P’s report. "In 2006, Citadel Group reaped the rewards of years of restructuring and investments but also strongly benefited from its acquisition of the energy business of failed hedge fund Amaranth Advisors. Last year saw a significant increase in returns compared with 2004 and 2005, accompanied by an increase of the volatility of returns as measured by the standard deviation of monthly returns, but at all times well within the prescribed risk limits of the funds. The funds have never had an unprofitable year."

The chances of a single Gulf currency receded further in May after Kuwait decided to break away from its US dollar peg and fix against a currency basket instead. At the time of writing the make-up of the basket was not known.

Market mechanisms, not inflexible penal taxation, are the way to deal with global warming. And market approaches also open profitable channels for investors.

Broker dealers collaborate to sponsor Project Alpha.

Companies working on improving inadequate water supplies in Asia’s growing economies are the prime focus of Wessex’s water investment fund. Co-founder Tim Weir tells Helen Avery how the company analyses their likely profitability.

Investors are concerned that while low yields on Latin American sovereign debt and increasing opportunities in the corporate sector are driving more and more investors towards corporate fixed income, Wall Street credit research can’t keep up.

Institutional investors might reduce private equity investments because of the growing number of club deals.

Despite a long-running battle between the government and the army over Turkey’s religious and political future, foreign investors continue to flood the country with capital. That means plenty of business for foreign and domestic investment banks, and for a new wave of small but ambitious boutiques. Lawrence White reports.

In late May, Fitch Ratings cautioned that the outlook for debt issuance from central and eastern Europe might not be quite as rosy as some bond originators would have us believe. Although acknowledging that macroeconomic fundamentals in the region are strong and that the global environment remains generally supportive, the London-based ratings agency warned that substantial external financing requirements in some states mean that they are relatively highly exposed to a potential abrupt tightening in global liquidity. "Sovereign credit ratings in emerging Europe have risen further over the past 12 months, with seven upgrades and no downgrades," says Ed Parker, head of Fitch’s emerging Europe sovereign group. "However, upward momentum may be running out of juice, with only three countries – Armenia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine – now on a positive outlook and two – Hungary and Latvia – on a negative outlook."

Dividend swaps market soars as investors profit.

Amid the fallout from the US sub-prime sector collapse, investors are once again questioning the role of the ratings agencies. It’s not just that the agencies assessed the risks so badly; their harshest critics suggest the main cause for concern is that the raters are too cosy with the issuers on which they pass judgment. Alex Chambers reports.

As the boundaries of corporate securitization are increasingly stretched, the foundations upon which the concept is built are rapidly being eroded.

The sell side’s failure to engage its clients in plans for Project Turquoise could jeopardize its success.

Housing provision for a burgeoning youthful population puts the development of a mortgage market centre stage in the GCC countries.

It’s not often that you’ll find the majority of Euromoney staff in the same room together, what with vital conferences, meetings and sports-betting events going on all around the world. But to find them all in a church is surely a first.

Increasing international competition for China listings, most notably between London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and China’s domestic markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen, is squeezing market leader Hong Kong, say insiders.

Asia’s high-yield market has taken off, driven by unprecedented demand from investors. Public deal structures are becoming increasingly aggressive and private deals are beginning to leak into the public markets, giving cause for concern. Chris Leahy reports.

Argentina’s capital markets could lose some of their most important local investors at the end of this year as the government pushes people to move away from private pension funds to a new state-run scheme.

In most normal markets, when enough investors acknowledge the existence of a bubble, it will burst, so why has China’s ‘A’ share market, arguably the world’s most obvious stock market bubble, not popped yet?

Never let it be said that Euromoney hacks won’t go that extra mile to ensure our readers enjoy the hottest stories from the world’s frontier markets.

Hennessee’s 13th annual hedge fund manager survey reveals that managers are still shorting despite concerns that uptrending markets were shifting funds to long-only strategies. Hedge funds surveyed had a net exposure of +47%. Average gross exposure was 171%, the highest since the survey in 1995, indicating that more leverage is being used to generate returns. Charles Gradante of the Hennessee Group commented: "Despite the increase in assets and leverage throughout the industry, net exposures continue to remain fairly constant, indicating funds are finding a reasonable amount of short positions. However, we are seeing increased use of derivatives such as credit default swaps and ETFs, which we feel will become more common as the ability to borrow stocks and bonds declines.

"We absolutely cannot talk about it," was the repeated response of Goldman Sachs to market reports that it is setting up a mini private exchange to enable alternative investment firms to list without the hassles of regulatory oversight.

Commodity markets used to be dominated by producers and users hedging their production and consumption. Now the mass arrival of investors has profoundly transformed these relatively small and illiquid markets. Peter Koh reports.

The European Commission’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive is due for final implementation from November. Many participants in the foreign exchange market still seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that Mifid will not have any impact on them, because the EU’s prime intention is to protect retail equity investors. Furthermore, the FX market is relatively confident that it is already delivering excellent execution (see Does FX need best-execution regulations? Euromoney May 2006).

The Champions’ League football final between Liverpool and AC Milan failed to live up to expectations but that evening London’s capital markets journalists were treated to an unexpected match between Deutsche Bank and UBS. Deutsche had sent out save-the-date invitations over a month before for a press party on the terrace at swanky restaurant Coq d’Argent.

"Algorithmic trading can be shit sometimes"

After years on the second tier of economic performance, Germany is ready for a return to the big time.

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