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).

Synapse Investment Management, which was founded in 2006 by Graeme Anderson and Mark Holman, has put itself firmly on the map with the recent hire of Rob Ford from Barclays Capital.

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.

VTB, Russia’s second-largest bank, made a strong debut with its initial public offering in mid-May and helped to restore faith in the entire Russian IPO market in the process. In contrast to the ham-fisted domestic share offering by market leader Sberbank in February, VTB’s transaction, which involved Russian and London listings, was widely considered to have been much better marketed, with the result that both listings attracted widespread investor support.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association and a group of financial lawyers sponsored by the Federal Reserve (the Financial Markets Lawyers Group) have backed a Bear Stearns’ court appeal. In February this year, Bear Stearns was deemed liable for $125 million that fraudulent hedge fund the Manhattan Investment Fund, had deposited in the prime brokerage account it held at the investment bank before it filed for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court concluded that Bear Stearns was liable for the deposits as their "initial transferee".

LCDX success gives the green light for the growth of loan derivative products.

Euromoney’s borrower awards capture the most important names and trends seen across the globe during the past 12 months.

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?

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

Russia is equally capable of fatally deterring and irresistibly attracting investors, as two recent big bank IPOs showed.

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

Imminent competition between execution ventures is likely to mean more trading and therefore more money for everyone.

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

The real action in debt capital markets has moved off the public stage.

Challenges of running prop and client money prove too much for Dillon Read Capital Management.

Taking the proprietary traders out of a securities business en masse is a bizarre thing to do. It’s a good example of how not to build a hedge fund business.

The recent disruption in the US sub-prime mortgage market served as a warning to the CDO market of what happens when deals are backed by increasingly risky underlying assets. So why aren’t CLO managers – who are now buying single-B rated, covenant-lite loans in their droves – paying more attention? Louise Bowman reports.

Manuel Villas-Boas tells Laurence Neville how Espírito Santo Financial Group has coped with rapidly changing fortunes and what the family-owned group plans for the future.

Yemen is the Arabian peninsula’s anomaly. With one of the world’s poorest and quickest-growing populations, it sits uneasily next to booming petrodollar earners such as nearby Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.

By the start of last month it was official: the biggest collapse of a South African hedge fund had occurred. Evercrest Capital’s Evercrest Aggressive hedge fund, managed by Marc van Veen, lost 66% of its R200 million ($28.2 million) assets when it went short on Sanlam, a local insurer, betting that its shares would fall. Instead they went up by 17% in April. Local media speculate that a relatively high leverage level of five times compared with an industry average of two inspired the dramatic losses, although the exact level cannot be confirmed. However as the dust settles on Evercrest, which will be shut after just two years’ operation, questions are being asked as to how such losses can be avoided.

Merrill Lynch’s real estate team is looking decidedly thinner on the ground after a series of recent departures. CMBS head Nassar Hussain has left the bank along with John Bigley and Pascal Richard. They are understood to be heading off to different ventures: Hussain is rumoured to be setting up a Middle East-based property fund.

ABS CDOs are back buying sub-prime ABS but all remains far from well in the asset class.

There is a lot of talk in Kiev about companies undertaking IPOs. Every banker and company manager has contemplated the possibilities and many have attended conferences on the subject. Does Kiev need to brace itself for an onslaught of new IPOs as the market opens up or will the local legal infrastructure and stringent international standards stop all the talk in its tracks? Chloe Hayward reports from Kiev.

The Unifund conduit mirrors the Artesian structure that the UK bank created for water companies back in 2002.

Center Parcs points to the impact that growing private equity ownership is likely to have on CMBS structures.