Search results for

Concerns about lack of transparency force regulator to make participants register directly.

Private banking, project finance and mortgages are replacing brokerage and payroll lending as the main drivers of Saudi Arabian banks’ revenue growth. That is the view of Faisal Al Sakkaf, the CFO of the country’s largest financial institution, National Commercial Bank in Jeddah.

After months of silence and little sign of progress, Project Turquoise, an initiative started by a consortium of seven leading investment banks to create a pan-European multilateral trading facility, has started to take some concrete steps and gain credibility.

After a pause prompted by US-inspired volatility in the global equity markets, Russian companies have resumed new-issue activity, helped by the belief that the strong economic environment in the country will help insulate it from the effects of the fallout from the US.

Concern is growing in Israel over the US MBS portfolio of what until recently was the country’s biggest bank by market capitalization, Hapoalim.

DIC Asset Management – a wholly owned subsidiary of Dubai International Capital, the international investment arm of Dubai Holding; HSBC Bank Middle East; and Oasis International Leasing – has concluded the first close of its MENA Infrastructure Fund with commitments totalling $300 million.

Plus Markets, a London exchange group, has launched a new trading platform and expanded the list of stocks it trades. The new system, provided by OMX, will offer cheap quote-driven trading in 7,500 securities including the stocks of all the companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, 70 AIM-listed companies and several of the most liquid continental stocks. This is in addition to the more than 200 stocks listed on Plus itself. The move has come as a surprise to some market observers, who thought that Plus’s ambitions were confined to small-cap and micro-cap stocks and who believed that Plus was positioning itself as an alternative to AIM.

The London and Tokyo stock exchanges this November announced a joint venture to create a new junior market in Tokyo based on the LSE’s highly successful AIM model.

Goldman Sachs has appointed Beatrice Sánchez as regional manager for its private wealth management business in Latin America. She will join the US bank next spring from HSBC Private Bank. Sánchez will be based in Miami.

Industry veteran Albert Maasland has been appointed as Saxo Bank’s European chief operating officer. Previously, Maasland was head of business development, e-commerce at Standard Chartered. He has also held senior roles at Deutsche Bank and Chase Manhattan. "I’ve had a great time at Standard. It’s a really good bank, concentrating on what it does well. But I’m looking forward to starting at Saxo. It is hard to overestimate the impact that Saxo Bank are having in the financial services industry and their future growth potential and I am keen to be part of that winning team," says Maasland.

The Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), is fishing for extra funds after recalculating its plans and projecting that it will lend as much as 15% more than expected for the 2008-11 period, as it seeks to step up its investments in infrastructure. BNDES president Luciano Coutinho has been talking about growth of 10% in lending for infrastructure projects, focused on energy, communications, railways, ports, and water and sanitation. The bank has already announced that it needs an extra R$25 billion ($14 billion) for next year, prompting speculation about how the money will be found.

With the dollar in seeming free fall, the Gulf Cooperation Council is set to discuss the wisdom of keeping its member states’ currencies pegged to the ailing currency.