Investors may have learnt the lesson that bonds aren’t supposed to provide equity-like returns.

Bankers with emerging markets backgrounds are taking most of the senior positions in their firms.

Germany’s banking system is in dire straits, and the answer could be a radical one.

Have policymakers sent the wrong signal to financial markets?

Mortgage securitization by Brazilian banks has huge potential as the mortgage market is still worth only 2.2% of GDP.

The problems in the SIV sector are not only the result of funding and mark-to-market distress, but also because of sloppy structuring in the first place.

Population-growth and climate trends point to the growing importance of agricultural commodity markets.

But the flood is likely to be smaller than some bullish observers expect.

It’s not an impressive sight. Senior executives of leading financial firms have been castigating the media and investors for over-reacting to the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, insisting that their own firms remain sound and yet simultaneously pleading with the central banks to come and bail them out. It’s either a crisis or it’s not, guys. So which way do you want it?

Funds of hedge funds with underlying managers that have gone sour are understating the losses they have incurred.

The banks look to be overstretching themselves in borrowing abroad to fund increasingly risky domestic lending.

Private equity firms have a nice business flipping companies from one to another. But what happens when the music stops?

Japan’s equity bounce-back has lost momentum. But there are good grounds for believing that a floor has been reached and that renewed buoyancy is around the corner.

Downgrading tranches and revising criteria will not convince the market that the rating agencies are on top of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Investors will still want access to the best-run funds.

Investment house issuance on private electronic markets relieves them of regulatory burdens and speeds up funding. But poor liquidity remains a problem.

What exactly is causing weakness in the credit markets? The obvious answer is contagion from the sub-prime crisis – the fear is that there will be massive losses from the original securitizations of these poor-quality loans and the CDOs backed by these securitizations.

Emerging market debt has held up well in the face of a nascent credit crunch in developed markets.

A basket approach to pricing currencies could help curb Gulf inflation.

Who is there to save the day when hedge funds have a blow-up? Why, it’s other hedge funds, which can make a profit clearing up the mess.

As margin lenders to the two struggling Bear Stearns hedge funds High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Master Fund and High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Master Fund scrambled to avert losses in late June, another vehicle with links to the funds was facing up to problems of its own. Everquest Financial, which was recently formed by Bear Stearns (and had filed a registration with the SEC on May 9 to list), is one of a raft of new listed permanent capital vehicles that have been investing in the equity and first-loss parts of structured credit investments and been hailed as a vital new source of liquidity in this market.

The storm clouds that were once on the horizon are now overhead.

In June, investors began to reject low returns on subordinated structures such as PIK toggle notes from riskier issuers. It will be tougher for sponsors to pile more debt on their already leveraged acquisitions. But public company managers aren’t free from the private equity threat.

As some banks – and a tiny few aspirant young bankers – have realized, there’s good business to be built in the out-of-fashion traditional investment-grade debt capital markets.

Traders hoping that an uptick in volatility is here to stay should be careful what they wish for.

The sheer size and influence of sovereign wealth funds is attracting attention – not all of it positive.

Imminent competition between execution ventures is likely to mean more trading and therefore more money for everyone.

Taking the proprietary traders out of a securities business en masse is a bizarre thing to do. It’s a good example of how not to build a hedge fund business.

Russia is equally capable of fatally deterring and irresistibly attracting investors, as two recent big bank IPOs showed.

Housing provision for a burgeoning youthful population puts the development of a mortgage market centre stage in the GCC countries.