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It’s been a ropey year so far for Pakistan’s embattled stock markets but better news is on the horizon for global investors. Over the next 12 months, the government is expected to push ahead with aggressive plans to privatize a clutch of state-run firms, as the government seeks to cut into a current account deficit that widened to $14 billion in the fiscal year to end-June 2008, from less than half that a year earlier.

An investment research paper (Conditional Variance Swaps, Product Note, JPMorgan Securities, April 3 2006) by analysts at JPMorgan explains how variance swaps emerged.

Opinions are divided on quantifying the vastly important market for Shariah-compliant investment products, leaving institutions about how what resources to devote to them.

It’s a year since the credit crunch began and still there is no end in sight to the bloodletting. Alex Chambers looks at the prospects for bankers facing this unprecedented downturn as traditional alternative employment avenues, such as hedge funds, struggle to pick up the slack.

Qatar’s burgeoning economy has tripled in size over the past four years. A drive to diversify has achieved striking results in reducing dependence on oil and gas.

These tongue-in-cheek versions of common financial parlance are particularly insightful given recent market events.

Citi is poised to unveil Stuart Sopp as its head of G10 spot FX trading for Asia. Sopp, who will be based in Singapore, was previously working at Deutsche Bank in Sydney, where he traded spot Commonwealth dollars. Before that, he was at Bank of New York in London. He will report to Pritpal Gil, Citi’s head of FX trading for Asia.

SPA ETFs is looking into its first international exchange-traded funds. The firm, which has offices in New York and London, offers six ETFs that invest only in U.S. stocks but is considering launches of at least one offering that invests in European companies and at least one offering that invests in Asian companies sometime next year. Neil Michael, head of quantitative strategies, said European clients demand European funds to gain access to stocks on their continent. An Asian fund makes sense, he added, because SPA wants to offer a line of ETFs that is broad enough for advisors to build entire portfolios out of, and a diverse portfolio should have exposure to the growing Asian economies.

Americas Banking Atlas

Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar are vying to be the Gulf’s financial hub and the battle is by no means over, with each centre adopting a very different approach.

The many new financial services licences issued by the Capital Markets Authority in Saudi Arabia have presented international businesses with a challenge: which model to use to make the best of this new opportunity?

Hong Kong's Securities and Future Commission's (SFC) has approved State Street Global Advisors' fund to track the price of gold, despite its failure to meet the usual requirements for fund diversification.