Partnerships can enable global reach; Clients helping to drive this development

State approves $525 million capital raise; Move to longer-term, majority stakes

Big increase in regional private equity activity; particularly attractive metrics in Brazil.

The path to success in investment banking these days is pretty much preordained: top university, first-class degree, ball-breaking spell as an intern, some sort of post-grad qualification and no time for any outside interests.

Dell’s bumper LBO shows the high yield pendulum has swung back to loans as investors seek floating-rate exposure.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s European headquarters in Luxembourg City is a prime piece of real estate.

On September 3, Beijing announced a 3% tax on coal imports with low calorific value. Some market analysts are concerned that the tax might have a negative impact on Indonesian exports of thermal coal as the levy could remove any price advantages. Between January and July this year, Indonesia accounted for 97% of China’s lignite imports.

The Fed’s U-turn on tapering and the likely shakiness of any coalition Merkel builds in Germany both add uncertainty to investor sentiment.

Comb back through reports and analysis filed by sell-side analysts in the run-up to the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on September 18 and you’ll struggle to find any predicting that the Federal Reserve would continue apace with monthly purchases of agency MBS and Treasury securities.

After EU entry in July and despite five years of recession and a worrying local court ruling on foreign-currency mortgages, Croatian banks are in surprisingly good shape. The state even hopes to sell one of its biggest lenders.

The Greek economy has been more than the sick man of Europe; it has been a standing joke. But the discipline imposed by membership of the EU has forced the necessary adjustment and the future is beginning to look brighter.

Competition in Asia between the three leading continental European banks in the region is finely balanced. With many similarities in their business structures, how are they defining their respective positions in a changing market?

Charles Stewart pioneered Morgan Stanley’s presence in Brazil in the 1990s; now he is looking out from Latin America, spreading Itaú BBA’s message in Europe and beyond.

As China’s appetite for commodities appears to be fading, demand for Indonesian coal could also fall, putting the export economy under stress. Mining company Adaro explains why the future is still bright.

There has been widespread condemnation of the manipulation of Libor settings by employees of interdealer broker Icap, and rightly so. But the time has surely come for defenders of former Icap employee Colin Goodman, aka Cash Broker A, aka Lord Libor, aka Lord Bailiff, to step forward.

The emerging world is doomed to capital-flow instability unless the Fed takes into account financial volatility in high-growth regions in its monetary policy, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, finance minister of Singapore, tells Euromoney. He also calls on the IMF to provide greater guidance on capital controls and for Asian policymakers to introduce market reforms, as the summer sell-off rekindles the debate about how to stabilize emerging financial systems.

The agreement between Standard Chartered and Lloyds Bank to allow the latter to directly issue letters of credit locally in some 20 Asian markets and benefit from local currency settlement – using the emerging-market-focused bank’s infrastructure – has been touted as a win-win arrangement for both lenders. But the deal is not without its downsides.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers was the best thing to happen to Barclays. Euromoney investigates.