The 2007 guide to Portugal: download PDF

Latin America is on the move, undergoing an investment and financing boom unprecedented in its history. Latin American companies are acquiring globally, expanding regionally, and investing heavily in productive capacity, and R&D. Infrastructure projects are proliferating throughout the region. These developments reflect the region’s positive economic backdrop and corporate confidence in the economic policies and political stability that have come to characterize most of the region for the past few years.

Published in conjunction with: Global Investment House • SAMBA Financial Group

Are you fully up to date with developments on Europe's exchange traded fund market? With experts predicting rapid growth in the next few years and demand for the product from both institutional and retail investors intensifying, it is essential for industry professionals to keep ahead of the game.

Do you know your Apportionment from your Binary Options? Your Collateralized Obligations from your Gross Redemption Yields? If not, you needn’t look any further as this exclusive downloadable guide brought to you by Euromoney has over 30 pages of terminology from the financial industry explained.

A degree of blurring and overlapping in the terminology of the banking, insurance and investment management industries has been inevitable. This guide aims to demystify many of those terms, bringing some of the more frequently used technical expressions in all three disciplines into a concise, single volume. We hope it will serve as a useful guide for market participants in all three areas of the financial services sector.

Published in conjunction with: ABN AMRO Private Banking • Banco Urquijo • Bank Delen • Bank Gutmann • Citi Global Wealth Management International • Eurobank EFG Private Banking • Marfi n Popular Bank • Sal Oppenheim • SG Private Banking • Yapi Kredi Private Banking

Three years ago Khazanah, Malaysia’s state investment body, was instructed to become activist, holding on to most of the state’s corporate holdings rather than privatizing them, and setting tight performance targets. Chris Wright assesses the successful reconstructions, such as Malaysia Airlines, and those still under way, as at car maker Proton.

UBS may want to forget much of this year following the closure of its hedge fund, the departure of senior personnel and a profits warning for the second half of the year. Some investors are even calling for the group to sell its underperforming investment bank. Could the saving grace be its emerging markets business? Sudip Roy asks Huw Jenkins, CEO of the investment bank.

It has been a long, slow process but after more than a decade private equity dreams in Kazakhstan are becoming a financial reality. Guy Norton reports from Almaty.

Baffled at first by the unwonted benevolence of the clean development mechanism, Chinese enterprises rapidly jumped on the carbon trading bandwagon. There have been instances where companies have metaphorically as much as literally cleaned up – either way the net effect is beneficial to the environment. Chris Wright reports.

Market forces have the best chance of driving significant actions that will boost climate change. However the forces of resistance are strong – both from entrenched interests and the green movement itself. Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research argues for the nuclear option.

Balestra Capital’s global macro fund is up 110% year-to-date. Its market analyst, Ryan Atkinson, talks to Helen Avery about how it has played the sub-prime market fallout to its advantage.

The Turkish banking regulation and supervision agency (BDDK) has prevented Greece’s Alpha Bank from completing its acquisition of a 50% stake in Alternatifbank.

Al Gore, the former vice-president of the US, is the most high-profile figure in the fight to force action to combat global warming. He explains why a new approach to investment is needed, adopts an unusual position in the carbon tax versus cap-and-trade debate, and says banks are generally ahead of the game – but still have a lot more to do.

Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, announced that from this month the country will alter its time zone in order to boost the amount of daylight that residents receive. Chávez has already changed the country’s name, redesigned its flag and altered the coat of arms as he pushes his populist policies.

Bankers at Citi’s Asian headquarters in Hong Kong were stunned when Jeremy Amias, managing director and head of fixed income, currencies and commodities for the region, resigned late in August to join Noble Group, a Hong Kong-based supply chain manager of commodities and other resources products, as chief operating officer – finance.

Two approaches to replication leave a gap in the market.

According to a study by research and consulting firm Greenwich Associates, hedge funds generated nearly 30% of US fixed-income trading volume last year.

Søren Elbech has been appointed chief of the treasury division of the Inter-American Development Bank. Although his is technically a new position he effectively supplants Hakan Lonaus, chief of the capital markets division, finance department. Elbech joins from Eksportfinans, where he was executive vice-president, director of treasury. He will leave the Norwegian export finance agency at the end of this November. Also leaving Eksportfinans is Oliver Siem, head of funding, deputy director of treasury, who is taking a career break.

Jerome Cohen has joined Standard Chartered after a 13-year stretch at ABN Amro. In his new role, Cohen will look after Standard Chartered’s complex FX risk team based in Singapore. He will report directly to Richard Leighton, the bank’s global head of FX.

"Our aim is to provide long-term capital growth from an investment portfolio consisting of Iraqi and Iraqi-dependent securities." So reads the opening line of a monthly report for the Babylon Fund, a long-only mutual fund run by Godvig Capital Management, which is domiciled in the British Virgin Islands.

With various trading platforms reporting record volumes, it would be easy to think that foreign exchange had emerged from the wider market turmoil in the rudest of health. But some market participants fear that serious fault lines have been discovered in derivatives.

A broken watch shows the correct time twice a day. I have been a high priestess of gloom for at least a year and finally I can straighten my spine and look you in the eye. There were others who felt uneasy. Many senior bankers told me that the risks being taken were unsustainable. However, it was the investment banker, Paul, who put it most pungently.

A fundamental change to the terms of banks’ financing is likely.

BNP Paribas, through its Cetelem subsidiary, bought Banco BGN, a leader in consigned credit in Brazil, at the end of July.

David Soanes has rejoined the UBS fixed-income business.

Fixed-income funds hit hard by CDOs/sub-prime troubles.

Independent research firms feel the squeeze as fund managers consume more but spend less.

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LaSalle’s hedge fund administration arm now has more than $13 billion in assets, up from $6 billion at launch in March earlier this year. It’s an impressive accrual of assets given the already crowded administration space and indicates a need for administrators with experience in structured products and CDOs.