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Pravin Mouli has left his position as head of Morgan Stanley’s Latin American derivatives trading business to run Latin America trading with Javier Timerman at Bear Stearns’ New York office. Meanwhile Juan Martin, ABN Amro’s head of loan syndication, has left the Dutch bank for a similar role at Deutsche Bank. And Sandy Flockhart, president and group managing director for Latin America and the Caribbean at HSBC, is moving to Hong Kong to become the bank’s Asia CEO.

The Futures and Options Association has elected Steve Sparke as its chairman. His appointment follows the retirement of the much-liked and respected Roy Leighton. Sparke has worked in the market for 27 years in the City, both as a trader and a futures and options service provider. Most recently he was global head of UBS exchange-traded derivatives; he currently holds a number of executive and non-executive directorships, including a seat on the board of Euronext.liffe.

A basket approach to pricing currencies could help curb Gulf inflation.

Nowadays, it seems that virtually every Tom, Dick and Harry has a blog. I loathe the word, but as the self-proclaimed Martin Peters of financial blogging, I can see the attraction of having a website where you can vent your frustrations and post your musings.

Telefónica has successfully closed the largest multi-tranche Czech koruna bond issue by a foreign corporate. The main purpose of the transaction was to extend the company’s investor base to Czech investors – a move the Spanish telephone company has been interested in since its arrival in the Czech Republic after it acquired a majority stake in the country’s main telecom operator, Cesky Telecom, in mid-2005.

Private financing and the crossover space between debt and equity is an increasingly attractive area of business for investment banks. Already a player in the sector, Deutsche Bank is making a renewed push for dominance in Asia with a significant hiring programme.

Commodities offer a means of diversifying investment portfolios, and of bringing down volatility. They can also offer good returns to the savvy investor. But the markets still have some way to go in terms of increasing sophistication.

Competition for real estate expertise in Europe heats up.

S&P this June launched the new S&P Pan Asia Shariah Index, a new addition to its Global Shariah Index Series.

"Those that have known Mack for many years say the experience of losing out at Morgan Stanley at the turn of the decade, the manner of his departure, and his experiences in trying to turn around Credit Suisse, had a profound effect on him both as a leader and as a human being."

June marks the beginning of the hurricane season in the Caribbean, and every year there’s a chance that any given island will suffer devastating losses to infrastructure, property and life.

Standard & Poor’s has launched the S&P BRIC Shariah Index, aiming to give it a bigger share of the fast-growing Islamic finance market. The new index is designed to cover the largest and most liquid stocks in Brazil, Russia, India and China that meet Shariah law investment criteria and that trade on developed market exchanges – the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Standard & Poor’s already offers Shariah-compliant versions of its most widely used global indices – the S&P 500, the S&P Europe 350 and the S&P Japan 500, as well as the S&P GCC Middle East Shariah Index Series. "The S&P BRIC Shariah Index feeds into the already powerful line-up of Islamic indices launched over the past six months by Standard & Poor’s," says Alka Banerjee, vice-president of Standard & Poor’s Index Services. "Each of the constituents within the S&P BRIC Shariah Index is liquid and completely hedgeable. As a result, we are already seeing clients create mutual funds and structured products based upon the index." To be eligible for inclusion in the S&P BRIC Shariah Index, companies must first be constituents of the S&P/IFCI Index for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Constituents are then screened for Shariah compliance based on proprietary sector and financial ratios. Only those stocks deemed Shariah-compliant are retained for the final universe of the index. All S&P Shariah indices are screened by Ratings Intelligence Partners, a Kuwait consulting company.