Saxo Bank, despite reporting increased profitability, has shed about a third of its workforce. About 300 jobs have been axed at its Copenhagen headquarters, with up to 50 disappearing in London. The bank is believed to be reviewing its operations in both Singapore and Switzerland in particular. The cost-cutting comes after Saxo embarked on a spell of rapid and aggressive expansion. Its staffing level is now virtually back to where it was a year ago.

Onexim Group, one of Russia’s largest private investment funds, with more than $25 billion in assets, has entered into a strategic agreement whereby it will acquire a 50% interest in Renaissance Capital, the market-leading investment bank in Russia, the CIS and Africa. Commenting on the transaction, Stephen Jennings, Renaissance Group chief executive, says: "The partnership with Onexim creates a financial powerhouse with the resources, skills and ambition to be the clear leader in all its markets."

Millennium Global Investments has been awarded a A$450 million ($370 million) active currency overlay mandate by Vision Super, the A$4.3 billion Australian superannuation fund. The fund manages defined contribution and defined benefit schemes on behalf of 100,000 members and provides superannuation and retirement incomes to local government authorities, primarily in the State of Victoria.

Dubai Islamic Bank has appointed a new chief executive. Abdulla Al Hamli moves to the position from his role as chief of operations and information technology at the bank. Al Hamli has worked at DIB for nine years. For more than 10 years before that, he was director of information systems at the Dubai Ports Authority and Jebel Ali Free Zone.The previous chief executive, Saad Abdul Razak, left in late 2007 to join the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

Rightly or wrongly, credit derivatives will pay the price for failings across the entire credit market.

One of the curiosities of the financial meltdown has been the conspicuous absence of China’s leading commercial banks and brokerages in picking up bargains from the wreckage.

Proposals to make a settlement with hold-outs to Argentina’s defaulted bonds could raise the country much-needed funds.

Market share expected to be more evenly spread.

Exchanges try to steal a march on their rivals.

Funds seek alternative methods to sell options.

Fund suggests some European financials are an opportunity.

Investors who bought into the bank hybrid argument are unlikely to do so again in a hurry.

The Lehman Brothers website, may have provided a little insight as to why the bank collapsed last month. According to the Life at Lehman, People section of the website, one employee called Margot at the bank was surprised she made the grade:

Bank failures used to be massive news. But with so many cropping up these days they have, like world records at the Beijing Olympics, lost something of their shock value. How then to judge which have made the biggest waves?

The US bank (and it will take a while to get used to calling it such) stays one step ahead of the pack through successful capital raisings.

At the beginning of 2007, Euromoney wrote that the retail lending boom in the Balkans was putting pressure on the region’s banking systems and that cooperation between banks and authorities was vital. But as the world’s economic downturn pushes into southeastern Europe, that warning might be going unheeded. Jethro Wookey reports.

The CDS market is trying to withstand the strain of three almost simultaneous counterparty defaults.

Standard & Poor’s has begun assigning recovery ratings to the debt of 16 speculative-grade-rated Mexican corporations, as global investors are forced to place more focus on the recovery of principal after a borrower’s potential default.

The flamboyant stage presence and forthright views of Kotaro Tamura are becoming something of an annual highlight at Euromoney’s Japan Capital Markets Congress, and this year the LDP senator in charge of the sovereign wealth fund committee surpassed himself during an onstage interview that at times reduced a packed auditorium to helpless, if somewhat nervous, laughter.

As the financial turmoil claims its latest victims, holders of covered bonds see the strength of their investments.

The US government warned that failure to pass the Paulson plan into law would lead to disaster. In the worst-case outcome, that could mean wholesale nationalization of the finance industry. With Frannie and AIG, and a banking system that fails without dramatic Fed intervention, the Bush administration has already made a start. Peter Lee looks at alternative strategies that might prove sharper than Tarp.

International market access not yet certain.

It will take months if not years before we know with any certainty who the ultimate winners from the financial crisis will be. But having purchased the US businesses of Lehman Brothers it seems that Barclays Capital will be among them.

For so long seen as a banking backwater, cash management’s time has come. Revenues are high-margin, stable and growing. Products such as liquidity management will only grow in importance. And, with the huge client bases involved for the biggest players, it’s a gateway into a lot of other business. Laurence Neville reports.

The financial crisis has finally taken its toll on the money markets.

Longevity risk is a continuing, ever changing problem for pension schemes, determining the assets they have to deploy to cover their liabilities. Seven specialists look at how risk is identified and the different techniques and products available to cope with it.

A week, they say, is a long time in politics. We now know that a week can be an eternity in the financial markets, especially when it starts with Lehman Brothers going bust and ends with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley becoming licensed deposit takers so that they can snuggle closer to the Federal Reserve. Oh, and in between, you had the rescue of the largest US insurance company, AIG and the proposed Stalinization of US capitalism financed by the Land of the Free’s taxpayers.

Unibanco, which has a 52% stake in Brazilian insurance joint venture Unibanco AIG, is looking at buying the remaining share of the company if it goes on sale. The unit’s president, Jose Rudge, hinted in a conference call in September that Unibanco had the first right of refusal for the 48% share. "We are very attuned to opportunities that may arise from this and would analyse the opportunity to buy if it were for sale," says Rudge, adding that this would be a natural step for Unibanco. He declined to comment on whether AIG had offered to sell, or if Unibanco was in direct acquisition talks.

Is the new Nomura a threat to the dominant investment banks in the Asia-Pacific region?

Eurasia Capital Management (ECM) has created the first-ever Uzbekistan-dedicated hedge fund. The Uzbekistan Growth Fund was launched in September with initial capital of just $5 million but ECM founder and managing partner Alisher Ali Djumanov believes that the open-ended investment vehicle could grow substantially over the next couple of years.