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News that ICE is to relaunch its FX contracts gets a cool reception.

Russia, Iran and Qatar have signed a framework agreement with a view to establishing a gas cartel. Commenting on the deal, Alexei Miller, chief executive of Russian gas company Gazprom, says: "We have decided to have closer contacts, and it can be said that a large gas trio has been formed." It remains to be seen if the new agreement will extend beyond ensuring commonly agreed production targets into regulating gas prices on the world market as Opec does for the oil market.

Cash-strapped Pakistan is trying every trick in the book to stave off a humiliating default on its mountain of foreign borrowings and inject some life into its moribund share markets. Mirroring the financial crisis elsewhere, the State Bank of Pakistan on October 16 moved to inject liquidity into the country’s financial system, cutting the cash reserve ratio – the amount banks are required to hold in reserve – by two percentage points, to 6%, and promising a further one percentage point cut by November 15. SBP governor Shamshad Akhtar promised the country’s embattled bankers that the move would immediately inject up to Rs180 billion ($2.2 billion) into the banking system, with a further Rs90 billion in capital to be freed up "at a later date".

The people of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger delta have yet to see many benefits of the natural resources under their feet. But Rotimi Amaechi, governor of Rivers State, the most populous delta state, is trumpeting the measures he is taking to improve his state’s infrastructural deficiencies. He tells Euromoney that in Nigeria’s federal system, the 36 states get 30% of government revenue, while the nine delta states get additional cash thanks to their importance in the country’s petrochemicals industry.

Until now, the most famous thing the small Australian wheatbelt community of Parkes could boast was a massive radio telescope on the outskirts of town known locally, with typical Australian reduction, as ‘The dish’. Nationally recognizable, the dish was the one thing that connected Parkes and, by extension, Australia, to the world and beyond. Moonshots have been traced and tracked from Parkes. Visiting US citizens – astronauts and their counterparts from Nasa – would periodically add foreign dash to Parkes’s determinedly middle-Australia ethos.

Despite turmoil in the global stock markets, Cambodia is pressing on with its plans to open a stock exchange in late 2009. A note from Leopard Cambodia, a private fund that invests in the country, confirms that the currency of the exchange will be US dollars and that "the newly announced listing criteria include two years of profitability, $1 million paid-up capital or $2 million shareholders’ equity, and 100+ shareholders or 10% free float".

HSBC is buying 88.89% of Indonesia’s Bank Ekonomi for $607.5 million in cash, almost doubling the bank’s network in the country. The offer of Rp2,452 a share was a 29% premium on the bank’s stock price at the time of the offer; the shares rose rapidly on news of the deal.

Difficult market conditions cost the hedge fund industry $210 billion over the third quarter, according to Hedge Fund Research. Of that, $31 billion was in outflows as investors pulled money out. The entire industry, which was thought to hit $2 trillion last year, is now at $1.72 trillion, says HFR.

Costa Rican pension funds are in desperate need of more local investable securities, according to senior bankers in San José.

Hungary reached agreement on a $25.1 billion rescue package last month from a number of multilaterals, including the IMF. The money will be used to help Hungary shore up its financial system, battered by the international crisis. Hungary’s reliance on external debt has made it especially vulnerable with the forint down 20% against the dollar and euro in the past month.

In late October, the upper house of parliament in Kazakhstan passed the latest amendments to a law designed to bolster confidence in the central Asian republic’s banking sector, which has been buffeted by the global credit crunch. This, in turn, has choked off the supply of cheap foreign currency debt that had fuelled the rapid expansion of Kazakh banks’ networks and lending portfolios in recent years.

Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister, caused something of a PR nightmare when he announced at a G8 meeting in Washington that he would consider banning hedge funds in Italy. He added that hedge funds were opaque and problematic. "Clearly he is crazy," says the head of a prime brokerage. The Alternative Investment Management Association and the Managed Funds Association were more diplomatic, responding jointly: "It is too easy to point a finger at an industry that is misunderstood; hedge funds are not an appropriate scapegoat during a crisis that was caused by failures in the regulated banking system. The hedge fund industry in Italy is a model of successful regulation, provides excellent risk-adjusted returns for investors and is an important source for job creation. It would be a serious mistake to consider eliminating these innovative private pools of capital that are, in fact, an essential source of capital to investors, to Italy and to the global economy."