JPMorgan Cazenove has moved quickly to replace David Sismey, who left for Goldman Sachs in August with Chris Babington, who has worked at Deutsche Bank for three years. He is an experienced FIG originator, previously at BNP Paribas and Paribas before the merger. He joins JPMorgan Cazenove as a director reporting to John Mayne, head of debt capital markets. He will look after northern Europe, with a particular focus on the UK. “We are pleased to have Babington joining us. Clients like him and we were very fortunate that he was looking for a change,” says Mayne.

Higher underlying ratings will change the economics of the pub securitization market.

Central bank governor emphasizes the resilience of the financial system at a time of crisis.

Corporates are under pressure from shareholders and private equity bidders to leverage up to boost returns. The danger is that they submit just as the economy slows. Some riskier companies are already overstretched. As the debate over the optimal corporate capital structure grows more rancorous, the good news is that most corporates are starting to pile up debt on very strong balance sheets.

Enormous energy is going into the creation of new Shariah-compliant finance structures for eager Middle Eastern corporates to fund themselves by appealing to Islamic investors and their growing pool of money. Every market participant expects the surging Islamic finance sector to keep on growing fast. But a key element is missing. Secondary trading in these instruments is severely limited. Sudip Roy suggests that for the recent increase in primary market activity to be sustainable, more attention needs to be devoted to trading infrastructure.

A management buyout, a large merger, an IPO, regional acquisitions and investment by Europe’s largest pharmaceuticals player – the past eight years have been anything but dull for the Czech Republic’s Zentiva. Company CFO Petr Sulc talks to Kathryn Wells about the challenges the company has faced and how it plans to finance further growth.

Michael Walsh of hedge fund Kilkenny Capital Management talks to Helen Avery about the fund’s melding of information about medical innovators’ development and sales processes with finance theory to assess biotechs’ future value.

Vallimarescu eyes opportunities in local markets.

The index begins trading under a cloud after a data management firm said it intended to sue FTSE/Xinhua Index for breach of contract.

Most investors want to invest in the best companies; Asia is no exception to this. The region’s best-managed companies are a diverse bunch but have some crucial characteristics in common. Chris Leahy reports.

One hedge fund blew up and lost a reported $400 million after getting caught short. The other lost $4.5 billion after finding itself long and wrong. At first glance, the only connection the two companies have is that both were hedge funds, and both were punting in the highly volatile natural gas market.

Zar Amrolia has been appointed global head of foreign exchange at Deutsche Bank. His promotion is one of a number of senior-level changes at the bank. Amrolia replaces Jim Turley, who had the wider role of head of global currencies and commodities. In turn, Turley has moved to become global head of the institutional client group, replacing Brian Reid, who is taking a sabbatical after 21 years in the industry. Sources say that Reid intends to return to Deutsche in 2007. Someone familiar with Deutsche’s structure described Turley’s new role as “huge”. He will have global responsibility for the bank’s institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.

Leasing is one of the hidden jewels of European banking. Its use by balance-sheet-constrained large private companies, credit-constrained small and medium-size enterprises and indebted public sector entities, including municipalities and local authorities, is growing rapidly. Europe is fast surpassing the US as the largest market for leases as more and more borrowers see the advantages compared with traditional loans. Peter Koh finds that banks are delighted and selling the product busily through their branch networks.

Barclays Capital has decided to add algorithmic trading functionality to the front end of its Barx foreign exchange trading platform. The bank made its PowerFill service available to clients on its graphical user interface (GUI) on September 18.

RBS has astonished the securitization market this year with a remarkable pace of issuance. Shortly after the bank issued £11.25 billion-worth of RMBS paper in just three months, director of capital management and securitization Ron Huggett explained the bank’s new thinking to Louise Bowman.

The British Bankers’ Association’s Credit Derivatives Report 2005/06 was unveiled at the BBA’s third annual credit derivative conference held in London on September 21. In 2004 the BBA survey predicted that the global credit derivative market in 2006 would be $8.2 trillion but it is actually $20.2 trillion.

As a consequence of Merrill Lynch’s revolving door policy in FX, Steve Kemp has resigned from the Foreign Exchange Committee. Kemp, just one of the many global FX heads Merrill has had over the past decade, left the bank this summer. Merrill has had few representatives on the Federal Exchange Bank of New York-sponsored committee, which is seen as a prestigious role in the market. Members have to be invited on and there is no guarantee that Merrill will get to sit at the top table again.

Hedge funds are the new financiers to the movie industry, attracted by the potential returns on diverse portfolios of movies especially from DVD sales. Hollywood has a bad reputation for parting star-struck investors from their cash. So the hedge fund managers will need to stay sharp and structure their investments carefully. Helen Avery reports.

Hope Pascucci has resigned as joint global head of global capital markets at Deutsche Bank after six months in the role, to spend more time with her family. She has moved to Boston with her children and husband, Mike Pascucci, who retired from Merrill Lynch last year where he was head of credit trading. She was previously global head of debt capital markets and before that European head of DCM and global head of syndicate. Having joined Deutsche in 2000 and spearheaded the bank’s rise up the debt league tables, Pascucci is one of the best-known figures in the euro market. Thomas Gahan is the new sole head of GCM. He reports to Anshu Jain and Michael Cohrs, joint heads of the investment bank. Pascucci’s effective replacement is Ivor Dunbar, the new head of global capital markets, Europe and Asia, and he will run regionally debt, equity origination and syndication. He also continues to run global markets Europe. Pascucci’s former co-head, Richard Byrne, will now be head of GCM Americas.

* Harry Culham update: 6 February 2008

Losses from trader error in December should have been reversible, securities house claims.

A growing number of large leveraged acquisitions are being refinanced in the corporate securitization market. Sponsors are seizing on the competitive pricing compared to traditional leveraged loans to squeeze more leverage and higher values into their bids. It’s a growth market, but the technique only works for certain companies Louise Bowman reports.