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The central bank has begun to address the financial crisis but must take more action.

Can Gulf financial centres’ high ambitions be fulfilled in a post-credit crunch world with falling oil prices?

Unprecedented high spreads between European government bonds are prompting some radical – and frankly unworkable – new ideas.

Predicting corporate default rates on the basis of historical experience is a futile pastime.

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

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.

Government intervention shows that there is real cause for concern.

Christian Wait, global head of sales at Lehman Brothers, has moved to Standard Chartered where he will head global markets. He reports to Lenny Feder, global head of financial markets. Wait, who was European head of DCM before he moved back to the US to head up structured credit sales in 2005, will be based in Singapore. Meanwhile, Ben Katz, a former senior FIG structuring banker at Lehman, will join Barclays Capital in London. He reports to Richard Boath, head of FIG. Lorenzo Frontini who spent 11 years at Lehman, mostly in syndicate, before moving in June to run Italian FIG DCM, has moved to a similar position at Deutsche Bank. He reports to Renato Grelle, who runs Italian DCM.

The witch-hunt of Dick Fuld is wrong. But that doesn’t mean it won’t continue.

The inclusion of the Pfandbrief in the German government’s banking guarantee marks a turning point – not just in the financial downturn but in the product’s entire history. Jethro Wookey reports.

Nomura’s great leap forward: Will Lehman takeover help fulfil its global ambitions?

The list of badly flawed financial institutions is long: Barclays (crumbling shareholder value), Société Générale (poor controls), UBS (total mismanagement), Lehman Brothers (vainglorious leadership), Bear Stearns (dereliction of management).