Eurex is clearly very proud of its new exchange-listed credit index futures. To celebrate the launch, the international derivatives exchange threw a party at the London Aquarium in Westminster, giving it the full James Bond treatment.

Performance and regulatory changes make raising capital tough.

The US government has in recent weeks intensified its pressure on the international community to enforce sanctions against Iran in response to its continuing programme of uranium enrichment. It seems, however, that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez will be among those world leaders who ignore the proposed boycott. "The only country that has developed atomic bombs and dropped them on entire peoples is the North American empire... they don’t have the morality to be giving anybody lessons," he said on his television programme Hello President.

Whatever the conclusion of the bid war for ABN Amro, it will put the Dutch bank’s prize Brazilian asset, Banco Real, into the ring.

Bank hires entire team of Ritchie Capital Management in Hong Kong.

The maturation of Asia’s hedge fund industry is evidenced by the number of new funds being set up by hedge fund employees in the region.

"Oh shit!"

Dominion Bond Rating Service is now an eligible External Credit Assessment Institution with 11 EU countries. It is part of a long drive by the Canadian-headquartered rating agency to break into the industry oligopoly.

Given that it bought Advantage Home Loans as long ago as December 2005, Morgan Stanley has taken its time to launch its first non-conforming RMBS transaction, ResLoc UK 2007-1. But the deal is not an Advantage deal; just 9.87% of the loans in the deal are actually originated by the lender. Morgan Stanley has been busy buying whole loan portfolios from other non-conforming lenders to ramp up this deal and the lion’s share of the collateral is actually originated by GMAC-RFC (79.9%). This will certainly offer investors comfort, given GMAC’s longevity in the sector. However, given the intense scrutiny that sub-prime lending has been under of late, the low, 6.1-month seasoning of the portfolio together with its 82.6% loan-to-value ratio might give some pause for thought. The US bank hired mortgage market veteran Rob Collins from Abbey last year to front its residential mortgage securitization business.

Boards spend more time discussing alternative investments.

Three cheers to Raiffeisen International.

Slackening underwriting standards in loans that back a burgeoning CDO market? It all sounds horribly familiar.

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Private equity specialist Carlyle is moving into the hedge fund business on the back of "client demand and product diversification", according to a source familiar with the firm.

Niall Cameron, who left ABN Amro as head of traded markets in February this year, has joined the Markit Group.

Credit Suisse closed the first issue of long/short collateralized commodity obligations notes in April. Rated AAA by Fitch Ratings and denominated in US dollars, euros and Australian dollars in three-year and five-year tranches, the $190 million issue of notes offers protected coupon payments and principal repayments based on the performance of long and short positions on a portfolio of commodities.

Can you afford to invest in Cuba’s London Club NPLs and maybe wait 20 years for a restructuring? Perhaps not, but there are other potential winning bets on the wilder shores of the emerging markets.

Doubts have surfaced about the feasibility of monetary union after a tense meeting of central bankers.

Political horse-trading in Serbia continues following the late January elections. However, despite the lack of a new government the country remains a strong magnet for foreign direct investment. In recent weeks, Serbia has concluded the politically sensitive sale of a leading mining company and the Belgrade Stock Exchange remains one of the best-performing bourses in the region. Romania’s Cuprom has secured the ownership of RTB Bor, Serbia’s largest copper mine, paying €303 million for a company the World Bank had suggested be closed down. Additionally, Cuprom has agreed to invest a further €137 million, alongside a €120 million commitment from the Serbian authorities to upgrade and provide equipment for the facility. Despite opposition from nationalist politicians and RTB Bor’s own management, the sale was pushed through by the outgoing government in the hope that it would boost economic prospects in Bor, one of Serbia’s poorest towns. Cuprom managing director Horia Simu says that the government had achieved the best possible price for the mine at a time of high copper prices. Copper prices have risen 44% in the past three months alone.

The International Securities Exchange, which pioneered electronic equity option trading in the US, has listed contracts on four currency pairs: US dollar/euro, US dollar/sterling, US dollar/yen and US dollar/Canadian dollar. Timber Hill will serve as the primary market maker, and Citigroup Derivatives Markets, Lehman Brothers and Optiver US will act as competitive market makers. The contracts are very much aimed at the US retail sector.

Czech power provider CEZ has been voted central and Eastern Europe’s best-managed company for the second year running. Rising energy prices are helping the firm to record strong profits, but why are analysts so impressed by the firm’s management? Lawrence White reports.

Dresdner Kleinwort has bolstered its Russia and the CIS investment banking franchise with the appointment of Igor Lojevsky as chairman of global banking and capital markets. He will join the bank in July following gardening leave, having most recently worked at Deutsche Bank in Moscow where he had been head of sales and origination for Russia and the CIS since 2005. Previously, Lojevsky had been co-head of investment banking for Vneshtorgbank in Moscow from 2003 to 2005 and had also worked in London from 2001 to 2003 for Deutsche Bank’s corporate finance team. Lojevsky effectively replaces Bob Foresman, who left the bank to become deputy chairman of local investment bank Renaissance Capital. Russia is Dresdner Kleinwort’s strongest market outside the UK and Germany. According to Dealogic, the bank was number one for Russian initial public offerings as of end-2006, Eurobonds and securitizations, and number two for syndicated loans.

Chinese regulators now want the largest state-owned firms to list at home, leaving smaller private companies to trade in Hong Kong. But these might be the best Chinese companies and losing them may be a big mistake.

One man, one vision might be a line from a naff Queen song but it neatly encapsulates the role Herbert Stepic has played in building Raiffeisen International into one of the strongest banking franchises in Europe.

Ukrainian politicians and bankers are considering allowing the dollar-pegged hryvna to become a managed floating currency. A first reading of a draft law in the country’s parliament, the Rada, has led to expectations that such a change could be made within 12 months.

Head of prime brokerage Hannah Goodwin talks about expansion of the bank’s services to Singapore.

The opening up of the Chinese FX market has continued with the unveiling of a new trading platform by the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. The platform, which uses Reuters’ electronic trading technology, initially went live on March 12 for currencies other than the yuan before being expanded to allow CFETS member banks to trade the yuan against five other currencies in early April.

With Hoteloc still ringing in the market’s ears, Deutsche Bank’s conduit trips up on its pub valuations.

Taking advantage of its recently gained status as a recognized overseas clearing house, Eurex, the derivatives exchange owned by Deutsche Börse and SWX (Swiss Exchange), announced plans to begin offering sterling-denominated single-stock futures on UK-listed shares in May.

Opportunities to invest in deep-value companies in Asia are plentiful but local knowledge is required to assess risk versus reward properly, Harmony Capital’s Suresh Withana tells Helen Avery.