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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.

The world economy is set to keep growing fast for the next few months. But this will take an inevitable toll on the cost of capital, which is already rising.

In a move that demonstrates the broadening appeal of Russian assets, HSBC Investments has launched the first pure Russian equity fund for Japanese investors, raising more than $150 million since launching a marketing campaign at the end of March.

The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong announced in June that it would be "streamlining and simplifying" the licensing process for hedge fund managers with immediate effect. Alexa Lam, the SFC’s executive director of intermediaries and investment products, said: "These initiatives will make the licensing process easier for fund managers and more particularly for overseas hedge fund managers. They are not intended to lower our regulatory requirements because we recognize that these contribute to Hong Kong’s reputation among investors as being a jurisdiction in which appropriate standards are insisted upon among its market participants."

Emerging markets remain the primary driver of hedge fund returns for 2007 so far, but all of HFI’s indices continue to outperform the MSCI index in the long term.

William Cumming, former European head of Citi’s global special situations group (GSSG), is on the move again. He has quit Citi for rival RBS, joining the UK bank’s private equity division in New York. Cumming moved to Citi’s GSSM just over a year ago in April 2006. Before that he had been co-head of the bank’s European securitization business with David Basra since 2004. In his new role Cumming will be working alongside Lindsay McMurray, who rejoined RBS in October 2005 after quitting the bank in April 2004 to join Drawbridge Capital, sister company of Fortress Investments. During her time away from RBS she also spent a few months at Merrill Lynch.

S&P stance tempers optimism.

Sub-prime-induced volatility was cited as the reason for the withdrawal of a five-year and 10-year euro-denominated transaction by Arcelor. The lead managers – Calyon, Citi, Commerzbank and RBS – sent out a terse statement saying that the borrower would return when stability returned.