"We want to be the Singapore of Europe." That’s the striking slogan employed by Gligor Tashkovich, Macedonia’s minister of foreign investment. Speaking at Euromoney’s Regional Finance & Investment for South East Europe Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, Tashkovich told delegates that the Balkan republic is pulling out all the stops in an attempt to secure the necessary foreign funds to help turn the country into a centre for hi-tech assembly and manufacturing. Tashkovich says that the centre-right government that came to power in late August 2006 is slashing its way through red tape and providing special incentives that it believes will transform Macedonia from a still primarily agrarian economy to one that is more knowledge-based.

Evolvence Capital, a Dubai alternative investment company, is on track to raise $150 million for what it claims is the region’s first hedge fund when it closes to investment next month.

China’s mergers and acquisitions market is gathering steam after a couple of relatively quiet years. Elliot Wilson reports.

Citi announced on October 2 that it would acquire the remaining shares in broker Nikko Cordial that it does not already own to make the company a wholly owned subsidiary. The move marks the first usage by a foreign firm of the new triangular merger legislation, which allows firms to use their shares rather than cash to make acquisitions and which has been available since May after a ban on the practice was rescinded.

BNP Paribas has hired Kai Harden, who joins from Goldman Sachs, to co-head its Germany, Austria and Switzerland FIG business alongside Menko Jaekel. He is based in London and reports to Anthony Fane, head of DCM FIG Europe. Harden spent two years at Goldman Sachs and before that worked at JPMorgan.

A growing number of superannuation funds in Australia are turning away from funds of hedge funds and external advisers to set up hedge fund manager selection capabilities in house.

As Brazil’s economy and financial markets pick up, Credit Suisse and UBS face growing competition from other foreign banks and domestic contenders. Chloe Hayward reports.

Quantitative investment strategies are valid, says report.

Royal Bank of Canada has launched its €15 billion covered bond programme with a jumbo issue in the European covered bond market. The deal is Canada’s first ever covered bond.

The credit crunch fundamentally altered the cash bond/CDS dynamic. As more and more managers are forced to turn to CDS to hedge their bond portfolios, will we ever see a return to highly liquid cash markets? Jethro Wookey reports.

If you cast doubt on the future of the Dubai real estate market, those with stakes invariably tell you that they have heard it all before. "Every year they tell me something will go wrong, and every year I see Dubai growing stronger," Adel Al-Shirawi, CFO of Dubai home financier Tamweel, told Euromoney earlier this year.

If hedge funds have increased systemic risk, we need to find out by how much and whether the benefits outweigh the risks, says Andrew Lo and Amir Khandani’s paper on quants (see story on page 42). But registration is not the way forward. The authors back up proposals made by other academics that instead a monitoring board would make a good starting point. "By establishing a dedicated and experienced team of forensic accountants, lawyers, and financial engineers to monitor various aspects of systemic risk in the financial system, and by studying every financial blow-up and developing guidelines for improving our methods and models a capital markets safety board may be a more direct way to deal with the systemic risks of the hedge fund industry," concludes the paper. "A great idea," comments one manager, "but the banks will never allow it."

According to Olivier LeMarois, CEO of Riskdata, equity market neutral funds’ reliance on one risk model for both trading and risk management exacerbated their losses in the summer.

The credit crisis has forced US enhanced cash funds, which seek to better money market returns by taking on slightly higher levels of risk than regular money market funds, to fight to secure their reputation.

The Hedge Fund Working Group, a UK group of managers headed by Andrew Large, has released its extensive guide to best practices for hedge funds that it hopes will encourage a global standard.

Leading specialist emerging market fund manager Ashmore Investment Management believes that local-currency and high-yield corporate debt could be the prime way for investors to take advantage of US dollar weakness and sub-prime mortgage concerns in the coming year.

The Cairo and Alexandria Stock Exchange (Case) has launched a new exchange for small and medium-sized enterprises. Case has established several new trading capabilities in the past two years, such as margin trading, online trading and short-selling. Case also plans to launch a derivatives exchange late next year. "We would like to see our derivatives market competing with other emerging markets," says Maged Shawky Sourial, chairman of Case since 2005.

Kazakhstan looks set to be the CIS region’s biggest victim of the fallout from the problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market, with the country’s banks seen as the most vulnerable in the Commonwealth of Independent States to any reduction in global liquidity. In recent weeks, the country has been hit by ratings downgrades, whipsawing bond and equity prices, and pressure on the currency. Furthermore, the track record of the banking regulators – previously regarded as the best in the region – is now beginning to look tarnished.

Monte Kristo Capital of the UK is the latest foreign entrant to the burgeoning Georgian banking market, having bought a 70% stake in Tetri Bank for an undisclosed sum. Following the deal, Tetri Bank, the country’s 16th biggest bank by assets, will be renamed First British Bank. Monte Kristo’s move is the latest in a series of acquisitions by foreign banking groups in recent months. France’s Société Générale, Russia’s VTB and Ukraine’s Privatbank have all bought banks in the Caucasian republic.

New-issue activity in the securitization markets of Russia and the CIS has dried up in recent months but VTB Bank Europe is clearly banking on a recovery. The London-based investment banking arm of VTB, Russia’s second-largest bank, has added Eke Neumann as head of retail securitization and Daniel Stadnik as head of commercial securitization. Neumann joins from DZ Bank, and Stadnik was previously at ABN Amro. Both new hires will report to Alex Medlock, head of securitization.

As Euromoney went to press, Bank Saint Petersburg was set to provide an important test of investor sentiment towards the Russian banking sector, with the bank’s initial public offering sure to be closely watched as an indicator of investor appetite for Russian banking assets in the wake of the fallout from the problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market. Joint bookrunners Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital set the price range for the IPO at $4.35 to $5.65 per share and $13.05 to $16.95 per global depositary receipt. Post-IPO the bank should have a market capitalization of $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion. As of July, BSPB was the 27th biggest Russian bank by assets

In October, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) added to its set-up in the Caribbean. The number one Canadian bank announced a $2.2 billion acquisition of RBTT (Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago) Financial Group. RBTT had been in discussions with potential buyers since April and suitors included Canadian rivals Scotiabank and CIBC, through its FirstCaribbean unit. RBC is paying for the group with 60% cash in hand and a further 40% in RBC shares.

One of Latin America’s biggest challenges is financing its massive infrastructure needs, and nowhere is this more pressing than in Mexico, especially in toll road development.

Tranches on the LCDX index debuted in mid-October, receiving a warm reception despite the cautious atmosphere in both the cash and synthetic leveraged loan markets. Dealers shrugged off comparisons to the doomed tranches on the ABX index (TABX) and are quietly confident that LCDX tranches will prove to have merit. However, given the still-fragile state of the credit markets, they are not expecting the new product to take off overnight.

180,600,000,000 the dollar amount of equity capital raised in Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) so far this year. The total is up 137% on the same period in 2006 thanks to record volumes across all Bric markets.

For much of the past couple of years, ECM bankers have had to sit on the sidelines as IPO mandates slipped through their fingers as companies opted instead for sales to private equity buyers. The current weakness in the credit markets, which is making life difficult for leveraged buyouts, has, however, turned the tables. In October, Cadbury Schweppes announced that it planned to spin off its US beverage unit, the maker of Dr Pepper and 7 UP, after a seven-month search for a buyer was derailed by the credit market crunch.

Spate of high-profile delistings by blue-chip European companies boosts Pink Sheets’ premium market segment.

Despite the help of a couple of jumbo multi-billion euro deals by Fortis and UBS, the European convertibles market appears to be shrinking.

In front of a US Senate committee, the agencies are indignant while investors claim they are focusing on the wrong signals.

Markit and Creditex held the first-ever LCDS credit event auction on October 23. The duo were the official administrators for the auction of US video store chain Movie Gallery’s defaulted contracts. Establishing a cash settlement price via an auction avoids difficulties arising from the fact that many contract holders might not have a position in the loans underlying CDS contracts.