In recent weeks significant moves have taken place in the higher echelons of European structured finance.

New valuation models have underscored the need for accurate mark-to-market pricing for credit derivatives.

UK companies struggling with pension fund shortfalls have been thrown a lifeline in the shape of investment banks and hedge funds. Wheels are in motion to create a market of defined benefit pension buyout ventures back by banks, hedge funds and entrepreneurs.

Boaz Manor, co-founder of Canadian $800 million hedge fund Portus Alternative Asset Management, says he doesn’t know what has happened to the $8.8 million-worth of jewels he bought with investors’ money, according to a lawyer investigating the fund’s failure. Manor is currently in Israel after fleeing there after his company’s meltdown. In total about $700 million has been secured after being found in 130 Portus bank and investment accounts in Canada, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Cayman Islands, says the local press. Where the jewels are remains to be seen. Creditors meet in June.

A rather angry group of American football players and the federal government are reportedly looking for Kirk Wright, whose International Management Association hedge fund allegedly robbed 500 investors of $185 million. The fund was eligible for investment as part of the football players’ financial advisers programme. Wright failed to appear in court, and has reportedly gone underground, claiming that he has received death threats.

A collection of valuable photos brought together by Refco over three decades is on sale at Christie’s in New York in an attempt to raise money to help pay back the $16 billion the commodities trading firm owes to creditors. Works by such photographers as Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus and Andres Serrano are included in the collection, which is expected to raise north of $6 million.

Deutsche Bank is about to launch an entirely new FX trading platform aimed squarely at attracting flow from the retail end of the market.

According to both EBS and FXall, the first quarter of 2006 was the busiest ever for FX trading. Talking purely about spot, EBS says daily activity in the quarter averaged $132 billion, a 2.3% increase on the same period in 2005.

At the start of April, Chuck Prince, chairman and CEO of Citigroup, came to Riyadh to lobby the Saudi finance ministry, central bank and capital markets regulator to let the US firm back into the kingdom less than two years after Citigroup sold off its 20% stake in Samba (previously Saudi American Bank). It was one of the early big decisions of Prince’s tenure as CEO and signalled the end of Citigroup’s presence in a country where it had operated since 1955.

As an increasing number of hedge fund managers chase similar strategies in a bid to make returns, Bryan Williams asks why more aren’t looking at municipal bond arbitrage.

Lehman Brothers has incorporated its European structured finance syndicate and the short-term credit business into its wider syndicate platform. Lorenzo Frontini, European head of syndicate, now has Brett Olson, Edward Rose and Yekaterina Antropova, who are responsible for structured finance, reporting to him. Jon Ford, who runs short-term credit reports to Frontini geographically and Paul Feidelson, global head of short term credit.

Foreign and local banks are preparing for intense competition to win market share in one of Europe’s fastest-growing financial sectors. Those not already in the field are likely to find this an expensive business. Nick Saywell reports.

There’s widespread agreement that there are too many portals providing FX prices but consolidation has been slow. Is the market going to stop waiting and roll out multi-asset platforms instead?

Fund managers with medium-size AUMs can be successful.

London is seen as the property hotspot in 2006.

The managers of a new equity fund say the big re-rating of Russia is over. It is time for a new type of fund that can prosper in a downturn, they argue. Julian Evans reports.

Forget the stymied constitution, Parisian événements, electoral tangles and government overspending – eurozone corporates are doing just fine and consumers are picking up on the mood.

Radoslav Jelasic, governor of the National Bank of Serbia, tells Nick Saywell about the challenges facing his country’s banking industry as levels of foreign ownership rise. The main issues now are transparency and supervision rather than solvency and liquidity.

Is the single-minded pursuit of alpha as smart a strategy as conventional wisdom would suggest?

While some analysts worry about the Austrian bank’s effect on prices in central and eastern Europe, others have a great deal of confidence in CEO Andreas Treichl and his X factor. Julian Evans reports.

The Kazakh authorities would like to establish Almaty as a regional financial centre but further reform and market development is necessary first. Patrick Gill reports.

Russian companies are not renowned for adherence to international standards in corporate governance but several from the Russian Federation are looking to list their stock domestically and abroad. How are these companies dealing with the standards demanded by international investors? Kathryn Wells reports.

In this edition, don't miss: Abigail's opinion of Lehman's Board of Directors and of Jeremy Isaacs' realm; her advice to Bank of America on investment banking; the details of HSBC's Studzinski's glam 50th birthday party; and hats off to Rainer Stephan, chairman of Barclays in Germany.

The ECB sets great store by the transparency of its decision-making process and the clarity of its communication with the outside world. ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet was reminding us of this again last month.

A new IDB report says the financial community should take advantage of the benign economic conditions and produce instruments capable of automatically compensating for economic setbacks. They include bonds linked to commodity prices, national growth rates or the occurrence of national disasters.

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, has issued a stark warning to the US government – threatening to blow up his country’s oil fields if the US were ever to attack. Speaking at a mini-summit in Paraguay involving four Latin American presidents, Chávez said: “We won’t have any other alternative but to blow up our own oil fields – they aren’t going to take that oil.” Venezuela is the fifth-biggest oil exporter in the world and one of the largest suppliers to the US. The US denies that it has any intention of attacking Venezuela.

Austrian bank CA IB has launched REX, the first publicly available real estate index to cover emerging Europe and the closely related Austrian market.

Guillermo Nielsen, Argentina’s former finance secretary, has a new role in the public sector. He is the minister of finance for the city of Buenos Aires, which has the third-largest budget in Argentina. Nielsen’s main task will be to reorganize the working of the city government and to attract investment.

Azerbaijan Electronics, one of the country’s largest energy utilities, has sold a $1 million one-year bond, the first from an industrial issuer in the country. The bond yields 14.5% and was issued at par.

No, you didn’t misread the headline. This year’s re-rating of the Philippines’ economy recently pushed short-term yields to four-year lows and even inside their US counterparts’ temporarily, according to ING. Could the unthinkable be happening? Might Asia’s perennial underachiever be about to turn the corner?