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Asia’s high-yield market has taken off, driven by unprecedented demand from investors. Public deal structures are becoming increasingly aggressive and private deals are beginning to leak into the public markets, giving cause for concern. Chris Leahy reports.

Funding officials at the largest 250 borrowers on the global debt capital markets were asked to rate their top three preferred banks in one of three categories: services to clients, major currency sectors, and by product type.

Banks are often inclined to monitor new issue league tables for evidence of their performance in fixed income. In Euromoney’s debt poll, though, those banks’ clients get to tell their side of the story. Quality and quantity, their views suggest, by no means always equate.

The private equity house has profound knowledge of both sides of the debt markets.

Argentina’s capital markets could lose some of their most important local investors at the end of this year as the government pushes people to move away from private pension funds to a new state-run scheme.

In most normal markets, when enough investors acknowledge the existence of a bubble, it will burst, so why has China’s ‘A’ share market, arguably the world’s most obvious stock market bubble, not popped yet?

Never let it be said that Euromoney hacks won’t go that extra mile to ensure our readers enjoy the hottest stories from the world’s frontier markets.

Hennessee’s 13th annual hedge fund manager survey reveals that managers are still shorting despite concerns that uptrending markets were shifting funds to long-only strategies. Hedge funds surveyed had a net exposure of +47%. Average gross exposure was 171%, the highest since the survey in 1995, indicating that more leverage is being used to generate returns. Charles Gradante of the Hennessee Group commented: "Despite the increase in assets and leverage throughout the industry, net exposures continue to remain fairly constant, indicating funds are finding a reasonable amount of short positions. However, we are seeing increased use of derivatives such as credit default swaps and ETFs, which we feel will become more common as the ability to borrow stocks and bonds declines.

"We absolutely cannot talk about it," was the repeated response of Goldman Sachs to market reports that it is setting up a mini private exchange to enable alternative investment firms to list without the hassles of regulatory oversight.

Commodity markets used to be dominated by producers and users hedging their production and consumption. Now the mass arrival of investors has profoundly transformed these relatively small and illiquid markets. Peter Koh reports.

GMAC and its new owner, Cerberus Capital, have used the ABS markets with skill to mitigate the impact of its troubled parent.

The European Commission’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive is due for final implementation from November. Many participants in the foreign exchange market still seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that Mifid will not have any impact on them, because the EU’s prime intention is to protect retail equity investors. Furthermore, the FX market is relatively confident that it is already delivering excellent execution (see Does FX need best-execution regulations? Euromoney May 2006).