The landscape of the Italian banking market has been completely redrawn over the past 12 months but consolidation remains work in progress.

First Fiji, now the Seychelles. Suddenly, all those long hours that originators spend on planes en route to visit potential clients seem less tedious.

Although benchmarking has a part to play in some areas, there is no single approach to best execution that suits all markets.

“A private equity play in China is exactly that – a private equity play. The price may go up or down, but that’s not a China strategy”

“When you talk about leasing, everyone thinks you’re talking about cars. My mother-in-law thinks I sell cars for a living”

The gap between the top two and their closest rivals continues to increase, according to results from our recent survey on international cash management.

Barclays Capital has identified a budding mortgage-backed securities market as one of the key reasons for its decision to open an investment banking and broker-dealer business in Mexico. The UK bank started operations in Mexico last month with $100 million in capital. Barcap also hopes to take advantage of the fast-growing local capital markets, as more companies seek to raise money through high-yielding peso-denominated bonds.

In the article in the September issue of Euromoney entitled, "How

More evidence of the chronic staff shortages still faced by Asia’s private banks came in September with news that UBS, the largest private bank in the region, has resorted to constructing its own purpose-built training facility for new recruits and existing staff to cater for the demands of its burgeoning Asia wealth management business.

While the current stage in the leverage cycle benefits corporate borrowers, concern has been raised about the protection that bondholders receive against declining ratings and event risk. Does good corporate governance have anything to offer this set of stakeholders, and should it have? Florian Neuhof reports.

There has been no relief from the pressures that last year’s annual cash management poll detected: globalization, declining margins and intensified competition. Smaller banks face a choice between expanding to compete or forming difficult-to-implement partnerships. Some might soon begin to question whether all the effort is worthwhile. Lawrence White reports.

More than 8,000 hedge funds are now registered in the Cayman Islands.

Eurozone countries are continuing to boost productivity vis-à-vis that in the US; consequently European equities are outperforming American ones.

Investigations into the backdating of stock options has caused around half of the more than 100 companies under scrutiny by the SEC and/or the Department of Justice to miss deadlines for filing earnings. More are likely to follow, says Todd Fernandez, senior analyst at independent institutional research firm Glass Lewis & Co.

The man behind Man Group is to step down from his role of CEO.

Benefit of hedge fund ratings to investors is questionable.

Further regulation on delivery needed, says consultant.

The debt burden is a growing worry, not least because many of those that invest in the debt market’s increasingly ingeniously packaged instruments are themselves heavily leveraged.

The postponement because of rain of the annual charity hedge fund polo tournament in Darien, Connecticut, meant a few key players were unable to make it, but it didn’t stop play altogether.

Buzz over US continues, but Europe still getting its act together.

There have been plenty of compelling reasons to go short credit as an asset class this year. Investment-grade corporates are under threat from leveraged takeover by huge private equity funds; at the lower end of the credit spectrum, the easy availability of cheap credit even to risky B-rated borrowers has stretched leverage ratios to unsustainable levels.

Over the years ABN Amro has suffered a series of setbacks. But Niall Cameron argues that internal noise over organization charts has died down and the focus is on the business.

The possibility that the long end of the US yield curve might continue to invert has supported long-end issuance from international sovereign and supranational issuers.

Taking the successful US CRE CDO model and simply applying it to the European CMBS market is unlikely to work.

Investors get fat yields as rating agencies seek extra credit enhancement.

Italian regional authorities’ healthcare securitizations are under threat following the ratings of Lazio, Campania and Abruzzo being placed on negative watch by Standard & Poor’s. Threats to the accounting treatment given by Eurostat and also domestic authorities point to the regions’ healthcare securitizations being classed as debt. This gave S&P the jitters over how they would continue to fund their healthcare deficits.

In contrast to the US, where supply is lacklustre and only just ahead of 2005 volumes, it will be a hectic last quarter in the European securitization market. Last year in November the market saw an incredible supply of €60 billion. Bankers expect that number to be easily matched this time around and maybe even surpassed. In fact 2006 total issuance is already 20% ahead of last year. In addition to jumbo UK RMBS, which is forecast by syndicate officials to figure highly, balance sheet CLO issuance from the likes of RBS, HSBC, Barclays and ABN is also said to be lined up.

Stocks traded on emerging market stock exchanges now account for 16% of global equities, according to Standard & Poor’s. However, despite these stocks’ growing weight and in many cases improvements in transparency and corporate governance, investors remain fickle. According to data from Emerging Portfolio Fund Research, a fund flows tracker, investors pulled $15 billion from emerging market stocks between mid-May and mid-September, reducing the year-to-date cumulative inflow to $17 billion.

Although NYSE member firms that conduct business with the public reported second-quarter 2006 after-tax profits of $2.95 billion and revenues of $78.64 billion, up from $1.13 billion and $53.32 billion in the second quarter of 2005, specialists reported a fall in both after tax profit and revenue. For the second quarter of 2006, NYSE specialists reported after-tax profit of just $26 million. During the same period in 2005, the specialists reported an after-tax profit of $33 million. Total specialist revenue in Q2 of 2006 was $215 million, compared with $220 million in Q2 of 2005.

52,300,000,000 funds raised in IPOs in dollars in the Emea region so far this year. That’s 60% up on funds raised over the same period in 2005.