Corporate earnings forecasts might still need to fall but the near 20% collapse in global equity markets since their 2007 peaks suggests that the worst might already be almost fully priced in.

Understanding the mark-to-market meltdown

When global events blew across the stock market, it sent Portugal’s smaller companies scurrying back into their shells just as they were being tempted out. That leaves only the biggest prepared to face the storm.

Infrastructure financing has become synonymous with Brazilian president Lula’s second-term government. As the country enters the first stage of its largest ever hydroelectric project there is a growing demand for funds that the local market is struggling to source. Chloe Hayward reports from São Paulo.

Operating company securitizations had to take a back seat to real estate as UK corporates rode the real estate boom in recent years. But with commercial property valuations in free-fall and the hybrid CMBS market dead in the water are opco/propcos about to make a comeback?

Lebanon still has no president, and now its public debt has been downgraded.

Nobody expects it to get any easier, especially if January’s figures for Europe and Asia are any indication of the future, says Neil Wilson.

February 11 was supposed to be so much fun for Anil Ambani. The billionaire younger son of the late Indian industrialist Dhirubhai had just floated his latest investment vehicle on the Mumbai stock exchange. Reliance Power’s stock sale was a cracker: sold in less than 60 seconds, its mid-January roadshow was a whopping 73 times subscribed, sucking huge chunks of liquidity from the system. Investors scrambled to buy paper linked to India’s latest infrastructure play – a company so shiny new that its valuation is based on a dozen huge power plants that won’t come online until 2012. Yet Ambani’s party, held at his plush Mumbai residence, turned out to be more wake than celebration. In the few weeks since Reliance Power’s roadshow, India’s markets tanked. The local benchmark Sensex index lost more than 20% in the five weeks to February 12. Several infrastructure-related IPOs were also pulled in early February, including Indo-Dubai real estate joint venture Emaar MGF, whose initial stock sale was slightly less than 90% subscribed when it was pulled.

Will the long-awaited recovery in the German real estate market be stopped in its tracks by turmoil in the debt markets? Louise Bowman reports.

The effects of the sub-prime crisis are spreading and could cost 2.5% of world GDP. Emerging market economies will not be immune.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is putting $350 million with smaller managers. The $240 billion fund is putting $150 million with emerging manager fund of funds FIS Group. It is the scheme’s first allocation to emerging long-only managers. FIS Group was set up in 1996, and its emerging manager fund of funds allocates to small investment management entrepreneurs that usually fall below the radar screens of large institutional investors. The maximum assets under management of managers will be $2 billion from around the world. Calpers will also be putting $200 million into Redwood Investment Management.

Understanding the mark-to-market meltdown

New accounting rules designed to improve transparency and disclosure were bound to increase noise on financial institutions’ balance sheets. But now they are adding to the credit crunch.

The reporting season in the Middle East this year has been an incongruous affair. There has been record revenue growth as the economic boom continues but some banks have had to be content with much smaller growth in their profits.

Two of the leading banking groups in central and eastern Europe, Austria’s Raiffeisen International and Italy’s UniCredit, have demonstrated that there is continued investor appetite for structured finance assets from the region with the launch of pioneering transactions.

From a subsidiary of an English public school to a UAE migrant labour camp: diversification can hardly be said to be lacking at Evolvence Capital. The Dubai-based alternative investment group is reportedly planning to market bonds backed by commercial mortgages worth up to $700 million in order to kick-start a $1 billion Reit. Aside from a migrant labour camp, the Reit, the company’s first, will also contain a warehouse and offices. Evolvence is apparently aiming for the CMBS to be sold in the fourth quarter.

The downward curve on Reliance Power’s post-launch stock price chart (see India: Reliance Power unplugged by inconstant investors, Euromoney, March 2008) wasn’t the only graphic shocker in India last month. In a single week in early February, three Indian corporates – Wockhardt Hospitals, real estate firm Emaar MGF and SVEC Constructions – pulled their IPOs. The lack of demand for their paper among every class of investor was stunning. Emaar’s $1.64 billion stock sale performed best but was subscribed just 0.83 times. Investors were even more Scrooge-like with SVEC’s tiny $10 million sale, which was only a quarter covered. But pity poor Wockhardt, whose $165 million was subscribed a pitiful 0.15 times on the institutional investor side, and just 6.44% among qualified institutional buyers.

Volatility creates opportunities but, in the case of some strategies, high levels can be lethal. Helen Avery talks to the founder of CTA Pirates of Profit about how risks need to be fully understood.

Central and eastern Europe is by no means immune to financial woes, strong economic growth levels notwithstanding.

Large Latin American companies with substantial exposure to foreign investment are adapting rapidly to the need for good corporate governance and receptive investor relations. But there is still a hard core of resistance to change from family-centred businesses. John Rumsey reports.

The UK government’s actions and intentions remain confused. It is time to end the uncertainty.

Banker: "We looked at SG, but the integration would have been very difficult and, in any case, the French don’t like to sell to foreigners"

Funds that offer private banking clients’ portfolio returns are being launched in March by the creators of the FTSE Private Banking Index series.

The financial services sector in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia looks set to remain a magnet for foreign direct investment thanks to growing economic and political stability.

Credit Suisse’s convoluted saga is a calamity for the banking sector as a whole. People might assume that banks don’t understand the numbers they are dealing with and that the numbers that are reported are not reliable.

The record number of ratings downgrades in structured finance has fundamentally altered the market’s dynamic.

Dow Kim, a 10-year veteran of Merrill Lynch who left the bank in May 2007, is to go ahead with his hedge fund, Diamond Lake, which he plans to roll out in April. Kim was co-president of Merrill’s global markets and investment banking division, and is largely blamed for the losses in the bank’s fixed-income and mortgages businesses despite leaving before the full extent of exposure came to light.

Foreign banks continue to eye expansion opportunities in Kazakhstan, despite the cloudier outlook for the central Asian republic’s financial sector. South Korea’s Kookmin Bank is in talks with Bank CenterCredit, the sixth-largest Kazakh bank, with a view to taking at least a 30% stake. UniCredit is looking to finalize its $2.2 billion purchase of ATF Bank, Kazakhstan’s number four player. But the Italian bank has become embroiled in a legal dispute with US hedge fund QVT Financial, which has accused it of abusing minority investors’ rights. Finally, a Russian investment bank is reported to have built a 10% to 15% stake in the country’s largest bank, Kazkommertsbank, on behalf of an unknown party, prompting further takeover speculation.

Companies are beginning to look to their neighbours for investment flows.

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, sent a calming message to US motorists this month, reassuring them that Venezuela is not about to cut off oil shipments to the US.