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Blackstone Group has hired Kemal Kaya as a senior adviser for its Turkish operations.

In the face of global market turbulence, rising oil prices and rifts in the country’s rickety ruling coalition, Pakistan’s markets remain a rare sanctuary of stability for embattled investors and acquisitive foreign corporates.

Which floor has the door to US homes?

The credit crunch has brought the benefits of a strong, experienced debt house into stark perspective, and there has been a realization that not all investment banks and their services are equal. Jethro Wookey reports.

It doesn’t take much to bring out the eccentricity of the English. And a ban on drinking alcohol on London’s underground system achieved just that, as thousands of revellers gathered on trains and at tube stations in late May to mark the last day that it was legal to have a tipple 50 feet under London’s streets.

CLS has added the Israeli shekel and Mexican peso to the 15 currencies it settles. "Bringing the benefits of CLS settlement to an ever wider community of stakeholders is central to our strategy of growing the value of CLS to the market. The local banking systems in Israel and Mexico will also experience the risk and efficiency benefits that CLS participation will bring, and we are very pleased to welcome these two new currencies to the CLS community," says Rob Close, chief executive of CLS Group.

Following the retirement of John Fleming at Credit Suisse and ABN Amro’s Paul White, another longstanding debt syndicate head has left his role. Lorenzo Frontini, who ran European debt syndicate at Lehman Brothers for four years has moved to origination within the bank’s global finance division. Frontini is a Lehman veteran with 11 years experience, and now will run coverage for Italian financial institutions. He reports to European co-heads of global finance Philippe Dufournier and Richard Atterbury and geographically to Riccardo Banchettti, CEO of Italy.

It is now very difficult to purchase market share via this method. How important is a firm’s market share to winning business now compared to a year ago?

Malayan Bank, Malaysia’s biggest lender, has acquired 15% of Pakistan’s MCB Bank, Pakistan’s fourth-largest bank by asset value. This is the Malaysian bank’s third acquisition in Asia in two months and the largest banking acquisition in Pakistan.

The gas transporter establishes a Colombian corporate benchmark by maintaining a flexible approach.

It is not that long ago that Barclays Capital dismissed the possibility that it would cater directly for retail foreign exchange business.