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"This is worse then a divorce – I’ve lost half my net worth but I still have my wife!"

The huge losses being reported by corporates from emerging markets around the world suggest that not all is as rosy in FX as might have been reported.

The BBC has launched a new series in the UK that seems eerily well timed considering the current financial situation. Little Dorrit, which premiered on Sunday October 26, is the story of a family that has fallen into debt and lost its house thanks to the overly aggressive lending policies of banks on the brink of world recession.

"This is a profound ethical issue. These are very sophisticated operations where the counterparty was not a hedge fund – it was not even a financial institution. Should a grocery chain be selling volatility protection?"

IMF loan may not be enough to stave off banking and currency collapse.

Pension system nationalization announced last month brings country ‘closer to the abyss’.

Russia’s mega-rich are fast emerging as victims of the global credit crunch.

Shared service centres debate: The benefits of centralization

China’s cabinet has approved a capital injection into ailing state lender Agricultural Bank of China, priming it for an initial public offering in late 2009 or 2010. In addition, $150 billion to $200 billion of failed loans will be sucked out of ABC, which was set up in 1979 to provide financing to China’s 800 million farmers, and stored in one or several of the country’s leading asset management companies. In a year full of record bail-outs, the capital injection will be provided by Central Huijin, a division of China Investment Corporation (CIC), Beijing’s sovereign wealth fund, ABC vice-president Pan Gongsheng told a press conference on October 22. Set up in 2005 to oversee the bail-out of other leading Chinese banks, Central Huijin will take a 50% stake in ABC, with the remainder to be held by the country’s finance ministry. The bank will also seek further capital – as well as much-needed management and risk-control expertise – from one or more foreign lenders, who will buy a strategic stake in the lender before its IPO.

Investors in convertible bonds have been washed out by the storm in debt, equity and derivatives markets, so potential issuers are having to look to other buyers.

Bank of America is due to close its acquisition of Merrill Lynch in March 2009 but it is still not clear what it plans to do with Merrill’s Latin American business.