Barclays Capital has poached Adrian McGowan from Deutsche Bank, where he was head of FX complex risk, to head its FX business in Asia. McGowan will be based in Singapore and report to Ivan Ritossa, the bank’s head of global markets – trading, Asia Pacific, and global head of FX and prime services.

Standard Chartered Bank has made three senior appointments of former Lehman Brothers staff to boost its financial markets management team. Remy Klammers becomes the bank’s new global head of fixed-income trading with responsibility for FX, rates, credit and structured products trading. Klammers reports to Lenny Feder, the bank’s group head of financial markets. Klammers was previously managing director of structured products Asia at Lehman. He is being joined by Alexis Suzat, who has been appointed as global head of structured products trading, and Marten Agren, who joins as global head of modelling and analytics group, financial markets.

Private equity businesses have taken a battering from the credit crisis but the industry remains flush with cash commitments from investors and appears to be trying to adapt to a world devoid of easy and cheap financing.

Uncertainty worldwide on the next move in interest rates is leading to short-term volatility and price gyrations in the foreign exchange market.

The fuller acceptance of volatility as an asset has moved closer with a new range of investable indices.

It is too early to call the end of the credit crunch but evidence that the crisis is not worsening, if not starting to ease, was in abundance last month. If March marked the lowest point in the financial crisis, the first half of April gave ample reasons to believe that sentiment is improving – at least in the short term.

UniCredit Markets and Investment Banking has hired Xavier Alexandre as its head of e-commerce and electronic trading for FICC. The bank has yet to finalize the reporting lines for this new position. Alexandre will be based in London.

Banks are paying the price for hanging on to their stuck leveraged loans for so long.

Competition between trading venues is leading to soaring trading volumes in Europe. Brokers are reaping the benefits and incumbent exchanges have yet to feel any pain, despite the success of new competitors.

Senior officials at the US Treasury are urging Latin American countries to pursue policies that will help grow their mortgage markets, despite the sub-prime woes of the US.

Citi has appointed Andrew Au as chairman of Citibank China and chief executive Citi China after an extended search to replace the previous incumbent, Richard Stanley, who was nabbed by DBS in February. Citi’s press release made no mention of Stanley, who presided over a successful period of investment for the bank in China, but described the search for a replacement as "comprehensive". Au has been with the firm for 24 years, and was previously country head for New Zealand before moving to Hong Kong to take on various regional oversight roles including head of trade for Asia-Pacific.

The Bank of England levelled the playing field for UK financial institutions last month when it followed the lead of the Federal Reserve and provided a facility for domestic banks and building societies to refinance mortgage-backed bonds for government bonds. Continental European banks have long been able to use the European Central Bank’s repo facility for their mortgage-backed securities. Until the European securitization market shut down, UK banks were by far its biggest users – accounting for between 40% and 50% of annual issuance over the past three years alone. The Bank of England has carefully constructed its programme to ensure that banks retain all credit risk.

Market sources suggest that Advent, a leading private equity firm, is set to exit from its majority stake in Nuevo Banco Comercial, the second-largest privately owned bank in Uruguay. This follows an agreement to sell NBC to the Gilinski family, who own GNB Sudameris, a small commercial bank in Colombia. The deal will probably be concluded this month.

Figures released by Isda during April show that the notional amount of credit default swaps outstanding during 2007 grew by 37% from the first half of the year to the second half. After the first six months of 2007 – before problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market tipped the credit markets into turmoil – there were $45.5 trillion of CDS outstanding but by the end of the year there were $62.2 billion. CDS notional growth for the whole year was a full 81%. The figures are a stark illustration of the extent to which CDS were embraced as a means of hedging credit risk when the markets turned.

29.4 and 44,000,000,000

In April, Instinet added Korea to the growing list of markets where it operates alternative trading systems.

Last month Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, named Roberto Hernández, a long-term member of the Venezuelan Communist Party, as the new labour minister. The decision came days after Chavez ordered the nationalization of a leading steel-making company. The Ternium Sidor steel works was taken over in April after the company refused to raise workers’ pay. Ternium is Argentine-controlled and this nationalization adds strain to the good relations between Chávez and the Argentine government. Chávez also put pressure on relations with the Mexican president last month when he ordered the nationalization of the cement industry, a move that included Cemex’s Venezuelan operations.

Liquidity remains the primary challenge in the present environment, meaning that few credit managers have ventured beyond the relatively liquid credit derivative indices. Managers including BlueCrest, Cairn Capital, CQS and Pimco are all seeking to take advantage of the unique opportunities the dislocation in the credit market has created, say market participants.

Tradeweb has unveiled an electronic market for deposits. The platform’s management say that Tradeweb Deposit will support the placement of new and maturing deposits in euro, sterling, dollar, Swiss franc and yen. The timing of this launch comes just as the focus on the money markets has sharpened as discrepancies between the reported fixing of the interbank offered rate and the real level of bank funding have emerged. The new offering has been running on beta since January and 1,500 placements had already been conducted as of April 22. Tradeweb’s belief that electronic trading will help price transparency in the market will no doubt be challenged by the leading brokers. But the benefits of e-finance around processing are less disputed.

The weather might not have been very spring-like (at least in London), but April heralded definite signs of a thaw in the loan markets. The standoff between the banks and opportunity funds that resulted in the $237 billion logjam of loans in the leveraged finance market (see Leveraged finance: Funds go hungry as distressed trough fails to fill , Euromoney, December 2007) has finally ended, with the former having blinked first.

If you’re sick of hearing about Goldman Sachs beating the competition, look away now. Euromoney has conducted its first (somewhat unscientific) poll of investment banks’ online popularity as measured on social networking site Facebook, and the US firm has won by a clear margin. Facebook allows companies to create ‘fan’ pages: "...a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand. Users can express their support by adding themselves as a fan, writing on your Wall, uploading photos and joining other fans in discussion groups."

There are complaints that investors are being misled by funds.

Thanks to its growing reputation as one of the most business-friendly countries in the former USSR, the Republic of Georgia has established a strong investor following with its first ever Eurobond. Lead managers JPMorgan and UBS reported that the $500 million five-year maiden issue in April was more than three times oversubscribed, enabling them to price it at the tight end of the 7.5% to 7.75% range.

Speakers at the EuroHedge Summit offered sound advice: leverage addicts were warned about the drug’s potency, and panickers were advised to panic in good time. Neil Wilson reports from Paris.

"The problem is that banks have ended up lending to these deals by accident – they thought that they were underwriting them"

Only suckers believe that the remedies applied to the credit crisis have cured the underlying sickness. There’s more painful adjustment to come, and it could last two to five years.

Russia’s infrastructure will cost trillions of dollars to fix. How are bankers and investors looking to profit from the rebuilding?

There may be plenty of doom and gloom among private equity practitioners in the US and western Europe as a result of the global credit crunch that has all but dried up their cheap financing. In Russia, though, the mood among their peers is almost euphoric. "I am amazed by how relatively easy it is to raise money for a private equity fund in Russia," says Florian Fenner, managing partner at UFG Asset Management in Moscow, which is fundraising for its second private equity vehicle. UFG is looking to raise at least $500 million and expects to make a first close at least half that figure in May.

The world is starting to resemble a spinning top: one week the markets soar, the next they sink. Even mighty masters of the universe are confused: hedge funds and banks had a dire month in March. And could there be a mightier master than Hank Paulson, the present US Treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs chief executive?

The crunch has precipitated a world where good credits can turn bad overnight. Research teams must adapt to the new circumstances while clients increasingly have their own expertise. Jethro Wookey reports.