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Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking has appointed Pascale Moreau and Albert Loo as global heads of interest rate and foreign exchange derivatives activity. The two become members of the bank’s capital raising and financing executive committee and replace Ines de Dinechin, who is now responsible for structured products worldwide. Moreau joined SocGen in 1998, having started her career 1994 in the Caisse des dépots et Consignations as market maker on FRF, DEM and ECU interest rate derivatives and then as a proprietary trader on G7 IR and FX underlyings. Loo started back in 1991 as part of the bank’s IT team in charge of asset management accounting projects.

Many active market participants have started to talk about how liquidity is drying up, although the latest set of figures from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange ostensibly suggest everything is still rosy in the FX garden. CME reports that its FX volumes rose by 41% in April over the same month in 2007, averaging 613,000 contracts per day, equivalent to a nominal $88 billion of turnover.

Osman Semerci, Merrill Lynch’s former global head of fixed income, currencies and commodities, and co-president of the EMEA global markets and investment banking business, has joined $1.7 billion alternatives group Duet as its chief executive. Duet Group, which started in 2002 with just $10 million in a single fund, now has 14 funds, and is looking to further expand its range of strategies, in addition to growing its private equity business.

There may be plenty of doom and gloom among private equity practitioners in the US and western Europe as a result of the global credit crunch that has all but dried up their cheap financing. In Russia, though, the mood among their peers is almost euphoric. "I am amazed by how relatively easy it is to raise money for a private equity fund in Russia," says Florian Fenner, managing partner at UFG Asset Management in Moscow, which is fundraising for its second private equity vehicle. UFG is looking to raise at least $500 million and expects to make a first close at least half that figure in May.

The results of the Euromoney credit research poll reveal which banks’ research models are best suited to the troubling environment in which the financial world finds itself, and which enjoy the most support from their management.

Only suckers believe that the remedies applied to the credit crisis have cured the underlying sickness. There’s more painful adjustment to come, and it could last two to five years.

The International Capital Markets Association raised SFr100,000 ($97,000) for underprivileged children with its annual ski weekend in Davos at the end of March. The event is more than 30 years old, but the potential for charitable contributions was only realized last year.

A reduction in foreign capital flows means that many banks in eastern Europe are indirect victims of the credit crunch.

The African Development Bank issued its third bond on the Bond Exchange of South Africa last month. The rand-denominated bond, the ADB03S, together with the ADB01S and ADB02S, which were issued in December 2007, total $408 million. Standard Bank managed and placed the issue. AfDB’s shareholders include 53 African countries and 24 countries from the Americas, Asia, and Europe.