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The current market is testing relations between managers and investors to the full, says Neil Wilson.

IRD debate: There’s demand for derivatives, just no funding

At a difficult time for the global asset management industry, the GCC countries are increasingly attractive markets. The region’s oil and gas fuelled wealth and increasing investment sophistication offer huge opportunities. Regional financial centres equipped with world-class regulation and facilities provide the right environments for international firms to establish local operations, while the Shariah-compliant investment market is growing in popularity and diversity. Stuart Pearce, CEO of Qatar Financial Centre Authority, introduces this report.

Halbis, the active management arm of HSBC Global Asset Management, has recruited Ed Conroy to its global emerging markets team, where he will focus on researching Russian equities. Conroy joins from Aberdeen Asset Management, where he was previously an investment manager in the global emerging markets equity team. Based in London, Conroy reports to Douglas Helfer, senior portfolio manager and head of Russian equities at Halbis.

Dealers report that liquidity in the variance swaps market held up well amid recent equity market turbulence. Equity volatility might finally have matured to the point where it is an asset class in its own right. John Ferry reports.

New heads of fixed income, loans and equity appointed in Europe – Berman takes banking role.

Regulators have put huge pressure on the CDS market to address counterparty risk. And the collapse of Lehman Brothers shows why. But in doing so they might be creating a bandwagon that exacerbates rather than solves the problem. Louise Bowman reports.

Abu Dhabi state-owned investment fund Mubadala has agreed to set up an $8 billion joint venture with General Electric. It will "focus exclusively on investment opportunities generated through GE Capital’s existing origination and servicing capacity, with targeted assets of $40 billion," they said in a joint statement. Mubadala will also become one of the 10 biggest stakeholders in GE by buying shares in the open market.

In-house hedge funds look to have been a costly mistake for investment banks. Far better, it seems, is to take stakes in independent ones.

Shinsei Bank has announced that it is to acquire General Electric’s Japanese consumer finance business for ¥580 billion ($5.4 billion). The deal comprises GE’s personal loans unit, Lake, as well as its mortgage loans and credit card arms, and will bring Shinsei more than 2 million new customers as it seeks to combine its consumer finance and retail operations.

Just weeks after RBS’s shareholders took up 95% of the rights on offer in the UK bank’s £12 billion ($24 billion) rights issue, the largest ever, investors shunned similar cash calls from UK banks HBOS and Barclays.

It seems astonishing that misuse of models still takes place in the foreign exchange market. But there is no doubt it does, although the industry’s self-imposed code of Omertà means that even those cases that seemingly everyone knows about rarely get exposed.