The small teams of professionals who work for the three clearing houses (foreign exchange, securities, derivatives) at Brazil’s Bolsa de Mercadorias & Futuros (BM&F) have a claustrophobia-inducing office, locked as they are inside a glass cube that sits in the centre of a larger room inside the exchange’s headquarters. Despite working in this intimidating setting, the clearing houses’ directors are welcoming and their efforts are for now focused on increasing foreigners’ access to and participation in Brazil’s growing derivatives market.

Valuations of sustainable stocks are becoming less sustainable as alternatives become conventional.

Highly unusual and interesting vehicle, but its precise status remains ambiguous.

In the July issue of Euromoney we incorrectly stated that Mizuho Securities had “number one league table status in yen bonds ($31.4 billion from 191 deals)”. The figures quoted were for Mizuho Group rather than Mizuho Securities; they should have read “number two league table status with $18 billion from 105 deals”.

The endless game of musical chairs at private banks in Asia claimed one of its most high profile scalps in August when Credit Suisse poached Marcel Kreis, southeast Asian head at arch-rival UBS, to run its entire Asian operation.

David Sismey, head of financial origination at JPMorganCazenove, has resigned to join Goldman Sachs. Sismey is one of the best known and most highly rated UK financial institutions originators and worked at JPMorgan for seven years under David Marks before moving into the US bank’s joint venture with UK broker Cazenove.

“The phoenix will rise again”

The SEC’s decision that it would not appeal against the judgement of the US Court of Appeals to strike down the regulator’s Rule amendments, which required hedge fund registration, has received a big thumbs-up from hedge fund managers, lawyers and consultants. The Alternative Investment Management Association, in particular, minced no words when giving its opinion about the overturned regulation. AIMA executive director Florence Lombard said: “We are pleased to see that the SEC has decided to take a fresh look at its proposal for hedge fund regulation. AIMA urges the SEC to ensure specifically that it permanently remove the requirement for non-US hedge fund managers also to register in the USA if they are already fully regulated in efficient jurisdictions, such as the UK and France. The requirement for dual registration, imposed by no other regulator worldwide, was unnecessary, expensive, led to complex issues for managers having to comply with very different sets of rules and created an un-level playing field.”

Some unusual price action just before the Bank of England announced an increase in its key repo rate in August has got the conspiracy theorists muttering.

Despite the push into credit derivatives, end investors remain on the sidelines.

Are bad habits returning to corporate Korea?

Are structures like Jazz music to the ears of investors worried that the credit cycle will turn?

With the US apparently nearing the end of its rate cycle, attention has started to focus again on the possibility of global central banks selling dollars and diversifying their reserves. But has the story has been overstated?

Allocating a far greater proportion of their assets to foreign exchange is one way pension fund managers can help solve the widely predicted global pension crisis, according to Bilal Hafeez, managing director, global head of FX strategy at Deutsche Bank.

Official reassures foreign investors following Pakistan Steel Mills fiasco.

Depending on whom you believe, July was either a return to the black for hedge funds or a continuation in the red. In July, the Greenwich Van Global Hedge Fund Index lost 0.20%; the RBC Hedge 250 index returned –0.11%; and the HFRI Fund weighted composite index returned –0.24%. Credit Suisse/Tremont’s overall index returned 0.29%.

The long overdue bank consolidation in the Philippines highlighted in June’s Euromoney looks as if it is under way. Within days of the article’s publication, two of the key identified targets sealed a deal. Union Bank of the Philippines acquired International Exchange Bank (I-Bank) for $263 million equivalent. That price values I-Bank at about 2.2 times book value and gives Union Bank an additional 78 branches and $1.35 billion equivalent of assets. Now rumours are circulating that a much larger prize might be up for grabs. Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), the banking arm of the Yuchengco Group, is said to be in play with several mooted buyers.

Newcomers to the IMF/World Bank meetings could find the event overwhelming. Should they attend the seminars? And if so, which ones? Where’s the best place to hear the gossip? And which parties should they attend? Confused? Don’t worry because help is at hand from an IMF veteran, as dictated to Sudip Roy.

Since the passing of the UK’s Enterprise Act in April 2004, UK bankruptcies have doubled and individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) – whereby borrowers can enter into a formal arrangement with their creditors – have risen fivefold. This is now becoming uncomfortably clear in the credit card ABS sector where charge-off levels were up from 4.72% in June 2005 to 7.04% in June 2006 according to S&Ps European Credit Card indices. Excess spread in these deals is trending commensurately downwards, from 7.13% to 6.31% over the same period.

The abrupt departure of John Eley from Hotspot FX has set tongues wagging across the foreign exchange markets. News that Eley had relinquished his post as president and chief executive was announced in a bland release issued by Hotspot’s new parent, Knight Capital, on 10 August. A week later, Eley was still listed on Hotspot’s website as being in his previous position, suggesting his departure was not one that was part of a considered strategic thinking process.

Arrangers have confirmed that CMBS will form part of the permanent financing for Grupo Inmocaral’s €3.7 billion bid for Inmobiliara Colonial. The target has assets in Spain and France, owning a majority stake in French SIIC Société Foncière Lyonnaise.

A series of rate increases by major central banks means that the equity markets can no longer rely on the excess liquidity in financial markets for support.

“When we were marketing our Asia hedge fund five years ago, one head of a large US fund of hedge funds observed: ‘Shanghai, eh? I bet you get great sushi there’”

“By the end of the year we’ll have seen a lot of money being shifted around between hedge funds. Investors are getting anxious about returns and will certainly be rethinking their allocations and redistributing assets.”

Are things finally starting to move forward in the much-heralded property derivatives market?

Issuers hoping to capitalize from German property securitizations will face stiffer competition for their portfolios.

Once a dealer, always a dealer

2,000,000,000 the estimated annual dollar cost to fund managers tracking the S&P500 and Russell 2000 indices because of index changes, according to an academic study by professor Vijay Singal, of Virginia Tech, Honhui Chen, assistant professor at the University of Central Florida, and professor Gregory Noronha, of the University of Washington at Tacoma.

The Egyptian government is about to part with one of its hottest assets. Bank of Alexandria, the country’s third-largest bank, with a balance sheet of $6.5 billion, will find itself in the hands of a strategic investor. And the government will find itself a good few Egyptian pounds richer.

Move over Thailand. Singapore’s government has decided that, at least for the duration of September’s IMF/World Bank meetings, it will usurp its regional neighbour’s soubriquet, “the land of smiles”. In a speech in June, prime minister Lee Hsien Loong exhorted Singapore’s citizens to greet its estimated 16,000 visitors with “4 million smiles”, a rough approximation to the city-state’s population, stressing the importance of showing the “human face and touch of Singaporeans”.