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Luis Valdivieso was named as the new finance minister in Peru last month. After nearly two years as finance minister, Luis Carranza stepped down from office. The move was not a surprise and Valdivieso is expected to maintain the same conservative approach to fiscal and debt management. Many applaud Carranza’s austere fiscal policies and credit him with moving Peru towards investment-grade status. On the day of Carranza’s resignation, Standard & Poor’s awarded Peru an investment-grade rating, the second rating agency to do so after Fitch in April.

How will the baby boomers that will come onto the Middle East’s job market over the next 10 years be employed?

Austria’s Erste Bank has bought a 9.8% stake in Bank Center-Invest for an undisclosed sum. Bank Center-Invest is a leading bank in southern Russia, which is one of the most economically diversified regions with limited reliance on the oil and gas industry and particular strength in agriculture. Founded in 1992, Bank Center-Invest is headquartered in Rostov-on-Don, employs about 2,000 staff and has 110 branches, the second largest network in southern Russia. Other major shareholders in the bank include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (27.5%) and German development agency DEG (22.5%).

MTF (that’s multilateral trading facilities to you and me) is about to become the acronym of the autumn, with umpteen new systems launching in Europe. It might be bad news for the incumbent exchanges; is it good news for anyone?

There will be more rallies but the equity market trend is downward, and there’s a worrying backdrop of rising inflation mixed with declining growth.

The role of the European Central Bank as the saviour of the European securitization market over the last year is not even up for debate.

Car manufacturers and their captive finance units might think themselves removed from much of the world’s financial turmoil. But are rapidly expanding emerging markets enough to keep the gloom at bay? Jethro Wookey reports.

In the new world of covered bonds, it really does matter where you come from.

The last of the traditional monoline insurance companies to maintain their triple-A rating are facing a downgrade.

Investors worry that proposed regulation will punish the European market for weaknesses in US sub-prime origination.

The market, it is said, is always right, but the performance of Icap’s share price is seemingly at odds with the company’s financial growth. Of course, Icap’s shares have been caught up with the general malaise affecting global equity valuations in general and financial stocks in particular but as the company pointed out in an interim management statement issued in mid-July, it has continued to benefit as a result of the continuing volatility in financial markets.

James Crosby, former head of HBOS, delivered his interim report on the state of mortgage finance in the UK to the government on July 29. But it does not make for good holiday reading. Despite outlining the extent to which lenders have completely withdrawn from the market and the effect that the shortage of mortgage finance is having on the housing market, Crosby emphasizes that his final recommendation might well be to do nothing. "I should stress that I may yet recommend that the government should not intervene in the market, on the grounds that such intervention would create more problems than it would solve," he says.