"On the day the Jérôme Kerviel story broke, we had two options for the lead story on the main news bulletin: SG, or the official inquiry’s report on the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers. It had found that the abuses were isolated incidents rather than systematic failures. A bit like SG claimed..."

The Indian stock market is in free fall, but on the sub-continent that story has had to take second billing to the forthcoming Indian Premier League 20/20 cricket tournament set to take place in April.

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.

Chinese banks face a potential corporate defaults crisis for the first time in five years.

Marking everything that is complex down to zero, because markets are illiquid, does not seem to be a particularly equitable or sensible way of going about things. And that’s before you even consider the way the marking malaise is contributing to systemic risk.

The precipitous fall in UK and continental European property values – in some cases 20% and higher – in the months since the sub-prime crisis began to bite has put pressure on a handful of commercial mortgage-backed securitizations. Refinancing risk is the greatest spectre in the CMBS market, with some deals facing dire consequences if banks remain tight-fisted with their cash in the next 12 to 18 months.

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

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.

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.

Structured products debate: presents a range of new challenges for providers and distributors of structured notes. Representatives of leading structured products houses discuss those challenges, and the opportunities.

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?

Hugo Chávez is trying to commit Venezuela to 21st century socialism. In the meantime, private financial services are booming. Buoyed by the oil price, Chávez’s policies keep pumping out money. But can left-wing policies and capitalism work an economic miracle in the long term?

Citi has hired Jaime Yordan to head its Latin American banking business. Yordan comes to the bank from CDK, a New York alternative investment fund, where he was advisory director. At Citi he will be vice-chairman of global banking for Latin America, reporting to Manuel Medina Mora, chairman and CEO of the business. He will also report to Raymond McGuire and Alberto Verme, co-heads of investment banking.

New Bramdean fund looks to bring new players to alternatives.

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.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the Japanese reputation for electronic gadgetry, Japanese institutional equity investors are embracing electronic trading in a big way, according to a survey by Greenwich Associates.

Geert Vinken, global head of syndicate at Barclays Capital, has retired. Vinken will be replaced by Mark Bamford, head of US syndicate. Vinken held the global role since 2000, having joined Barcap in 1998.

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

GSO Capital Partners intends to expand now it has the financial clout from its sale to Blackstone. The leveraged finance specialist has hired Najib Canaan, the head of asset-backed securities at Brevan Howard. Former colleagues of Canaan from his days at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette founded GSO.

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.

The latest bout of blood-letting at the bank may only tarnish its reputation further.

Brazil is notorious for many things, caipirinhas, carnival and beautiful beaches... but in the mind of one Euromoney journalist Brazil also breeds a special type of PR who can invent some of the most original excuses for delays to meetings.

LATIN AMERICA ONLINE EXTRA: Mexico’s structured finance market continues to grow on the back of its housing boom.

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.

Brazil’s private bankers are eagerly seeking out the means to differentiate themselves from rivals and attract the rich shoal of high-net-worth individuals a market boom has created.

Understanding the mark-to-market meltdown

Far from turning a corner in 2008, the market looks set for a few tough months yet.

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.

Just as Thailand has entered a period of rare political calm and optimism with a new prime minister, one of its most sickly banks has been given a new lease of life with a landmark recapitalization. But, just as the jury is out on whether Thailand’s government can build on its new foundation, it remains to be seen whether TMB Bank can turn the corner after years of underperformance. TMB Bank was created in September 2004 from the merger of Thai Military Bank, DBS Thai Danu Bank and Industrial Finance Corporation. The merger created what was then the fifth-largest bank in Thailand. It now has 471 branches and 5 million deposit accounts but has struggled to generate performance to tally with its scale. It recorded a full-year loss of Bt43.7 billion ($1.39 billion) in 2007, three and a half times worse than the previous year, and has non-performing loans equivalent to 15% of lending as of the start of the year, having set aside Bt31 billion in provisions last year for loan-loss reserve requirements and increasing bad debt.