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The credit crunch spreads east

While elsewhere the mortgage market is drying up and securitization is quiescent, the biggest economy in the Gulf is trying to expand both. The finishing touches are being applied to laws on the Saudi mortgage market but it’s uncertain they will provide enough flow to meet demand for funding. Dominic O’Neill reports from Riyadh.

Tradeweb has unveiled an electronic market for deposits. The platform’s management say that Tradeweb Deposit will support the placement of new and maturing deposits in euro, sterling, dollar, Swiss franc and yen. The timing of this launch comes just as the focus on the money markets has sharpened as discrepancies between the reported fixing of the interbank offered rate and the real level of bank funding have emerged. The new offering has been running on beta since January and 1,500 placements had already been conducted as of April 22. Tradeweb’s belief that electronic trading will help price transparency in the market will no doubt be challenged by the leading brokers. But the benefits of e-finance around processing are less disputed.

Private equity businesses have taken a battering from the credit crisis but the industry remains flush with cash commitments from investors and appears to be trying to adapt to a world devoid of easy and cheap financing.

Barclays Capital has poached Adrian McGowan from Deutsche Bank, where he was head of FX complex risk, to head its FX business in Asia. McGowan will be based in Singapore and report to Ivan Ritossa, the bank’s head of global markets – trading, Asia Pacific, and global head of FX and prime services.

Mongolia’s most profitable bank is considering accessing the capital markets later this year, according to its chief executive, Peter Morrow.

It’s a measure of the increased range of opportunities for the alternative investment industry in Ukraine that the launch last August of MTV Ukraine was made possible by Horizon Capital, a leading private equity fund manager in the country with around $300 million under management.

The Eurasian Development Bank, which was founded in 2006 to finance infrastructure projects in Russia and Kazakhstan, is to expand its remit to include investments in financial institutions, according to its chairman.

THERE HAVE BEEN some significant winners and losers in this year’s Euromoney foreign exchange poll. Astonishingly, Deutsche Bank has further consolidated its position as the top dog of the foreign exchange market, increasing its overall share to 21.7% from 19.3% in 2007.

The number of analysts at sell-side research houses has been falling since before the credit crunch, and has claimed several senior analysts.