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

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

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

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

Leading US private equity firm Darby Overseas Investments is poised to begin pre-marketing on a global emerging markets fund that will have a heavy focus on Asian investments.

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.

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

A liberalization of the mortgage market in Argentina could lead to a rise in securitizations and the creation of the country’s equivalent of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"The bosses of Europe’s big three stock exchanges, the LSE, Deutsche Börse and Euronext, deserve to have their heads knocked together. They appear to have let their egos get in the way of getting together and forming a genuine European powerhouse."

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.

As credit research is increasingly geared towards short-term trading ideas rather than fundamentals, there could be a dangerous dearth of information when defaults begin to rise.

The return of hard underwriting on recent bond deals underscores how mundane and risk-free the business had become.

Hedge fund rating is a noble goal but Moody’s and S&P’s approaches fail to fill the bill.

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.

As summer draws to a close, bankers and investors are gearing up for the rush of new bond issues that traditionally hits the market in the last quarter. In the emerging markets it’s little different. The pipeline of deals out of Russia is strong, Asia is witnessing one of its busiest times of the year and Latin American issuance should pick up now that Brazil’s election is out of the way. Even in the Middle East, corporates are beginning to appreciate the benefits of the capital markets.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

* Harry Culham update: 6 February 2008

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.