Mexico’s transport and communications ministry, the SCT, is expecting to relaunch its federal highway re-concessions programme within weeks. The Paquete del Pacifico, or Farac II, failed to attract much attention in an initial auction held in early March but this time the government hopes to stimulate interest by splitting the package in two.

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.

Hedge funds and banks are backing out of film financing deals because of liquidity issues.

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.

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.

If you want a microcosm of the bad habits global capital got into as the credit crunch hit, go to Brisbane.

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.

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.

At first glance, it is not the right time to leave the safety of a large corporation to start up a business alone. But that is exactly what a number of financial professionals are now doing.

Banking: BBVA remains bullish on regional prospects

The imposition of a more stringent global regulatory regime for all financial markets is the talk of the town at the moment. So it is somewhat surprising to discover that the implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid) in the EU in November 2007 resulted in a huge decrease in the number of FX brokers registered with the FSA.

The year of bumper debt issuance continues: after a record start to the year, as reported in February’s Euromoney, that saw more than $30 billion of bonds sold, the trend for large-scale deals from the region’s sovereign borrowers and top companies continues. In April, Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa sold $1.5 billion-worth of 10-year notes and Australia’s Suncorp-Metway issued $2.5 billion of government-backed debt. On the sovereign side, Indonesia launched its long-awaited debut global sukuk. The $650 million five-year notes yield 8.8%, providing much cheaper funding for the issuer than the five-year tranche of February’s regular bonds from Indonesia, which yield 10.5%.

The US Treasury has criticized banks for reducing lending after it bailed them out. The banks say they are doing their best and want to pay government capital back. A row is brewing.

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

Nigerian controls endanger foreign investment in Africa as a whole.

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.

Eddie George’s skills are missed now more than ever.

Rating agency treatment of distressed buybacks will make it even harder to salvage value in the battered loan market.

Don’t just blame the locals: these are age-old derivatives-based losses.

The sale of Pactual could be the first of many disposals of emerging markets assets by banks desperate to raise capital.