When he set up debt adviser Versatus, ex-Nomura leveraged finance chief Michael Berry joined a growing universe of ex-bankers looking to join in the corporate turnaround and restructuring business. He speaks to Louise Bowman.

[Sing this to Natasha Bedingfield’s "Pocketful of Sunshine"]

How many mega-projects can a crippled market handle? Saudi state bodies such as the Public Investment Fund are doing more to help the financing of projects but it might not be enough. Dominic O’Neill reports from Riyadh.

In the second part of Euromoney’s emerging market equity fund manager profiles, Chloe Hayward talks to seven managers and hears what history has taught them and how they plan to find their way through the minefield of commodity-linked stock markets, notably in eastern Europe.

In 2008, Russia’s property developers were hit by a brutal mix of fast-shrinking funding options and falling customer demand, sending equity valuations into a tailspin. Guy Norton reports from Moscow on the prospects for recovery.

Even before the global financial crisis fully hit home, Citi had recognized that its successful Asia-Pacific division could perform even better with a more centralized structure. Ajay Banga has put that in place, but the full impact of the changes might not be apparent for a while. Elliot Wilson reports.

Brazilian billionaire Andre Esteves has bought back much more than he sold just three years ago. His BTG-Pactual combination makes him one of the key players in Latin America’s largest market, and leaves UBS nowhere. Esteves outlines his ambitions to Chloe Hayward.

Gulf International Bank is finalizing a reallocation of shares in the light of a $4.8 billion bailout by its shareholders.

Goldman Sachs received plaudits following its first-quarter results. It beat all estimates when it posted earnings of $1.8 billion, equating to $3.39 a share, compared with expectations of $1.80.

Emerging markets hedge funds returned more than any other strategy in March, producing 4.63%, according to HFR, ending eight months of continuous losses. In 2008, average losses of emerging market hedge funds were nearly 37%, and investors withdrew $6.7 billion from them in the fourth quarter. Total hedge fund capital committed to emerging markets fell to less than $67 billion globally.

Much pressure has been placed on many market participants’ back offices as a result of the rapid expansion in foreign exchange trading volumes over the past few years.

Asset manager BlackRock is absorbing $1.5 billion credit manager R3 Capital Management. R3 was founded by former Lehman Brothers executive Rick Rieder. The beleaguered investment bank also sold about $5 billion in assets to R3 to manage last summer in return for a stake that it was later forced to sell under bankruptcy proceedings. In a letter to investors, BlackRock senior management stressed the importance of having the right employees and resources in order to take advantage of increased opportunities in mortgages and structured assets that are trading at distressed levels. The firm also hired Akiva Dickstein from Merrill Lynch to head its mortgage portfolio team and Randy Robertson from Wachovia to co-head its securitized assets team.

Ever-so secretive hedge fund Tudor is believed to have hired Robin Wilkins from JPMorgan and Aadarsh Malde from Goldman Sachs. As ever, no confirmation from any of the parties concerned at the time of writing.

Richard Leighton has now assumed responsibility for fixed income Europe at Standard Chartered, as well as continuing to run FX globally. "Last year, our business in Europe grew an impressive 143%. To ensure our continued ability to build on our success and take our business to the next level, we will be strengthening our organization by aligning our structure with that in place in Americas, MENA and Africa and appointing Richard Leighton as head of trading for fixed income for Europe," says an internal memo, quashing talk that Leighton is going to retire.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is finally turning to the private sector to prop up the country’s increasingly insipid economy, creating a strange relationship between the bankers and a socialist government that continually threatens to nationalize them. Chávez is pressuring the banks to buy the $15.8 billion the government plans to issue in local debt in 2009. The money is essential to Chávez’s plan to prop up the economy in the face of falling oil prices. The president appeared to deliver a veiled threat when he restated plans to privatize Banco Santander’s local offshoot at the same time as announcing the new economic funding. Analysts expect bankers to comply with his demands.

Cheyne Capital, a $6 billion European hedge fund, has hired Chris Goekjian as its new chief investment officer. Goekjian was head of global fixed income at Credit Suisse’s investment banking arm until 2001 when he left to set up fund of funds Altedge Capital. Altedge is to be integrated into Cheyne as part of the hire.

Latest figures show that new hedge fund launches and the total assets raised were both hit by the economic downturn. Neil Wilson reports.

It was no secret in the market that dissatisfaction at UniCredit, a conglomerate formed by the merger of about 20 different financial institutions, rose sharply after the bank told its FX staff by email that none of them would be receiving any form of bonus for their performance in 2008. This was despite the business having what insiders say was a very good year. Sources suggest that the move was one of the factors that prompted the departure of Ben Welsh from the bank in early April. Welsh was hired in September 2007 at a time when hopes were high within UniCredit that it would be able to meld together its numerous disparate parts and capitalize on what it described as its size and distribution network.

In April, MSCI Barra issued a research report: Currency hedging: a free lunch? This immediately reminded me of the mantra one of my old brokers repeated whenever I met him for lunch: "No biz, no fizz." In other words, as we all know and as I used to say, you don’t get nuffing for nuffing. The report is well researched but ultimately somewhat simplistic. So much so, that I was moved to ask if it should be subtitled: Stating the bleeding obvious. In effect, it says that if you hedge, you might increase your risk and might not make as much money as if you didn’t.

The well-liked and respected George Athanasopoulos has decided to leave Barclays Capital, where he was global head of FX and emerging markets distribution. Sources say Athanasopoulos is working his notice before heading back to Greece; he is expected to stay in the financial industry, most likely working for a buy-side entity.

The credit market has witnessed a number of unguaranteed deals from European banks. Increasingly, for well-capitalized financial institutions, there are investors willing to put money to work. Perhaps more important, the spread gap between where they can print government-guaranteed deals and issue paper backed purely by their own credit is no longer the yawning gulf it once was.

During 2008, Henderson Global Investors expanded into the advisory business and Ganesh Rajendra has been hired to drive this part of the business forward. Rajendra last worked at Deutsche Bank, where he was head of European ABS research.

BBVA: Staying ahead?

Argentine officials are hopeful that a new currency swap deal with China will increase confidence in the peso and give the monetary authority greater power to defend the currency. On March 30 the two nations finalized a three-year currency swap worth $10 billion in order to facilitate mutual trade. So far China has limited these agreements to other Asian countries and this is the first such contract with any Latin currency. China contributes only 12% of Argentina’s total trade and so the real impact on the peso is likely to be small. However, this deal is an important political tool for the Argentinians. As elections loom, this move to maintain a stable currency is being well received.

Xetra International Market, Deutsche Börse’s new pan-European foray, will launch in the fourth quarter of this year. Xetra will enable trading participants in 19 European countries to deal in European blue-chip corporates while settling domestically.

With the international debt market still inaccessible for most Colombian corporates, the local market provides a ray of hope.

Dierk Reuter has quit his job as global head of FX algorithmic trading at Deutsche Bank, which he joined in November 2007 from Goldman Sachs. Sources say Reuter is poised to set up a niche boutique and that he will be joined in his new venture by Matt Wilhelm from Goldman Sachs and at least two algo experts from RBS.

Do CDS spreads for Brazil and Mexico adequately reflect their relative economic health?

Trade body representations at the G20 Summit helped reduce the pressure for heavy-handed regulation of hedge funds. Neil Wilson reports.