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The government guarantee packages established across Europe will have serious implications for covered bonds. Few have followed Germany’s example of using the guarantee’s language to implicitly protect the Pfandbrief market, and while some explicitly include covered bond issues, others explicitly leave them out. Still others have yet to confirm the treatment of covered bonds either way. The speed with which the packages have been put together means that many details are yet to emerge.

But Barclays deal reprices agency sector.

The government bail out packages unveiled across developed countries last month may have prevented the collapse of a host of banks with more toxic assets than equity.

Martín Redrado, president of the Central Bank of Argentina, tells Sudip Roy why the banker should get through the global crisis intact.

When it comes to mergers and acquisitions, Turkey’s banking sector remains a land of opportunity. UniCredit analyst Matteo Ferrazzi says: “In central and eastern Europe, opportunities for mergers and acquisitions are few and far between. Most banks are already in solid hands or owned by foreign players. But in Turkey, it is a different case and there are still banks to be privatized.”

The country’s banking crisis at the start of the millennium prompted a bail-out, consolidation and the introduction of a strict regulatory regime. This has underpinned a period of loan expansion. GDP growth is slowing but the strength should persist, local banks insist. Charles Piggott reports.

The substantial help afforded financial institutions across the globe has failed to support spreads outside the financial sector. Corporate credit was responsible for the widening in both Europe’s iTraxx (Series 10) and the US CDX (Series 11) to 172bp and 225bp respectively – outside the previous wides seen in March. Confirmation that a global recession is on its way was the main factor driving the move.

Amendments made to accounting rules by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in mid October could allow banks to write back billions in losses incurred in trading books.

In an attempt to boost liquidity to financial institutions the US Federal Reserve has unveiled a scheme to support money market investors. Money Market Investor Funding will buy $540 million of short-term (up to three months) bank paper from funds. The Fed has created 10 private sector SPVs that can buy paper issued by up to 10 financial institutions – with concentration limits of 15%. Funds that sell into this programme receive 90% of the purchase price in cash and the rest as ABCP – which is effectively a first loss tranche for the individual SPV.

Several key creditors have funded Cuba’s banking system and development in recent years. Cuba’s main source of credit is China. Chinese authorities have promised a $70 million loan for a ­telecommunications cable project. China is also understood to have provided a high proportion of the export finance that led to a record $1.8 billion-worth of Cuban exports in 2006, a figure that increased in 2007.

It seemed like such a no-brainer. This time last year asset managers of every hue were falling over each other to establish debt opportunity funds – the obvious response to the looming liquidity crunch in the credit markets. Indeed, the number of firms setting up funds as early as 2005 showed how clearly they were seen as the next big money-spinner. Fast forward a year and, along with many other investment strategies across the capital markets, things have not quite panned out as planned. Credit opportunity funds that were poised to pile into the hung LBO pipeline last year were initially frustrated as many banks stubbornly refused to sell and secondary prices remained in the mid-90s. Several big sales in the second quarter of this year – such as Citi’s sale of $12 billion loans to Apollo Management, Blackstone Group and Texas Pacific Group and Deutsche Bank’s $5 billion deal with Apollo and Blackstone – were seen as a sign that the long-awaited deluge of distressed buying opportunities had arrived.

What was previously a winning model has become instantly bereft of merit in the eyes of investors.