For many reasons Mexico is the envy of its emerging market peers. The next step in its development will require attracting more international investors, but there are big challenges ahead.

International investors are increasingly looking at Latin America’s local currency markets, but foreign exchange volatility makes the buyside wary of losing any potential gains, as has happened with some recent deals. The mixture of currency and credit risk may be too heady a cocktail for some.

The troubles at Petrobras have hurt all of Brazil’s borrowers but bankers in the country think the worst is now over and that the bad news has been priced in. The proof will come when issuers return to the markets, but who wants to go first – and can the local markets produce the goods?

If a communications team is faced with the challenge of spinning the closure of a business line, it can get weird.

Belarus’s first deputy economy minister Alexander Zaborovsky insists that policymakers are keen to boost the share of the private sector in the economy through the development of new businesses. This meets with a high degree of scepticism locally, given the government’s record on the treatment of entrepreneurs.

From the pariah of Peregrine to thought-leader for a new type of finance, Andre Lee’s re-emergence is an example to those whose careers the financial crisis cut short.

Innovation is held back by the gap between the old financial system, investing and lending primarily against hard assets, and the new knowledge economy that depends on intangible assets. A new type of bank could benefit SMEs seeking to develop innovative products. It could also give investors the chance to redeploy speculative capital more productively. But who is the driving force behind Snowflake?

CEO Stuart Gulliver helpfully explains HSBC’s former practice of using a Swiss bank account in the name of a Panama registered corporation to take bonus payments for the Hong Kong bank.

Before revelations about HSBC’s private bank, its chairman and CEO were seen as a winning combination. As the fallout becomes increasingly political, could their relationship be coming under threat?

After the events of Black Thursday, the CEO of crest-fallen FXCM, the FX broker, discusses the shake-up in its business model, the future for retail flows, and lashes out at the institutional FX market structure.

Standard bond-trading language project retains support of dealer banks as it enters network-building stage

Inside the honeycomb: is this the future of bond trading? As bond market participants face up to the reality of diminished liquidity, low turnover and heightened risk of price gapping, the search for solutions is veering away from new trading protocols and exchange-like platforms towards providers of high quality pre-trade information. Do Algomi’s Honeycomb and MTS’s tie-up with B2SCAN point the way ahead?

Malaysia’s quest to create a regional champion with a large Islamic bank came to an end when a plan for a three-way merger was scrapped. The country’s second-largest lender by assets is now retrenching to boost returns and eyeing strategic acquisitions.

Angola could become the first African sovereign bond borrower since the great oil price crash this year in a debut deal that will set the tone for frontier-market debt.

What goes up must come down, even the renminbi. Having appreciated by more than 30% since 2008 against a trade-weighted basket, there is growing consensus that 2015 will see further falls in the Chinese currency.

Hungary’s government commits to reduce bank taxes, while a proposed stake in Erste Bank shows ‘we’re all in the same boat’, says the minister behind the plan.

Awards dinner photos are available here.

Prompted by new SEC rules, the largest prime money market fund in the US will switch to a government mandate. The move might herald the transformation of the $1.7 trillion prime MMF industry.