John H Eley is president and CEO of Hotspot FX, Inc. He is directly involved with developing applications of Hotspot FXi's exchange/ECN-structured marketplace, which provides buy-side traders with centralized price discovery, and fully transparent, executable, neutral, real-time multibank prices. These applications include full depth-of-market view, which enables investors to see all bids and offers in the market; to trade instantly and anonymously on live prices and enter bids and offers to better their execution price; and a suite of real-time and historical multibank market data, which enables institutions to analyze and benchmark their FX trade executions. Scott Freeman is managing director, global head of electronic trading service, GFX, Bank of America and spearheads the firm's foreign exchange electronic trading initiatives. Prior to joining Bank of America in 2004, he was with Citigroup for six years, focusing on business development and new initiatives in e-FX.

Left for dead after the financial crisis, the Philippine stock market is barely a rounding error on foreign investor's portfolios. But despite the country's economic woes, the market has emerged recently from its long sleep. Whether the recovery is a long-term trend or a brief flutter on an otherwise flat line seems to be up to the government. Chris Leahy reports.

The forced merger of three failed institutions to create Bank Mandiri, now Indonesia's largest bank, also spawned a new domestic securities house. Mandiri Sekuritas is half done in reaching its goals, reckons its management. Chris Leahy reports.

Jonathan Laredo (JL) After 21 years, 14 in banking, Jonathan with two partners founded Solent Capital, a hedge fund adviser specializing in fixed income. Jonathan had been head of Structured Finance at JPMorgan in Europe and Asia (credit hybrids, CMBS, ABS and CDOs). Hubert Le Liepvre (HL) is deputy head of SG CIB's Structured Credit Group. He joined SG in 1992, became Managing Director of SG CIB's credit derivatives business in 1999 and in 2002 was promoted to Deputy Head of the Structured Credit Group in London.

The spat between Morgan Stanley's chief executive and former senior managers benefits no one. It is time for Purcell and the grumpy old men to do what shareholders really want – walk away. But has the row left a leadership vacuum at the top of the firm? Antony Currie reports.

Japan's institutions are increasingly investing in hedge funds. But getting a fund off the ground in Japan is a tough task – institutions prefer large funds, but with few individual Japanese willing to invest it's hard to boost size. Helen Avery reports.

A flurry of big private-equity bids by hedge funds has sparked a turf war between two of the hottest growth sectors in recent years. Although some private-equity players reckon the threat to their business has been overstated and that hedge funds are ill equipped to handle private-equity deals, others are taking drastic steps to see off the competition. Joanna Hickey reports.

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