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The ECB sets great store by the transparency of its decision-making process and the clarity of its communication with the outside world. ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet was reminding us of this again last month.

The long-awaited privatization of Svyazinvest, Russia’s national fixed-line telecoms operator, could finally get under way within the next two months.

Azerbaijan Electronics, one of the country’s largest energy utilities, has sold a $1 million one-year bond, the first from an industrial issuer in the country. The bond yields 14.5% and was issued at par.

Central bank to change tier 1 regulation in two months.

Austrian bank CA IB has launched REX, the first publicly available real estate index to cover emerging Europe and the closely related Austrian market.

Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, has issued a stark warning to the US government – threatening to blow up his country’s oil fields if the US were ever to attack. Speaking at a mini-summit in Paraguay involving four Latin American presidents, Chávez said: “We won’t have any other alternative but to blow up our own oil fields – they aren’t going to take that oil.” Venezuela is the fifth-biggest oil exporter in the world and one of the largest suppliers to the US. The US denies that it has any intention of attacking Venezuela.

Guillermo Nielsen, Argentina’s former finance secretary, has a new role in the public sector. He is the minister of finance for the city of Buenos Aires, which has the third-largest budget in Argentina. Nielsen’s main task will be to reorganize the working of the city government and to attract investment.

A new IDB report says the financial community should take advantage of the benign economic conditions and produce instruments capable of automatically compensating for economic setbacks. They include bonds linked to commodity prices, national growth rates or the occurrence of national disasters.

Russia wrestles with transparency requirements

Radoslav Jelasic, governor of the National Bank of Serbia, tells Nick Saywell about the challenges facing his country’s banking industry as levels of foreign ownership rise. The main issues now are transparency and supervision rather than solvency and liquidity.

Foreigners breach Asia’s final banking frontier

According to both EBS and FXall, the first quarter of 2006 was the busiest ever for FX trading. Talking purely about spot, EBS says daily activity in the quarter averaged $132 billion, a 2.3% increase on the same period in 2005.