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As Latin American economies look forward to another year of robust growth, remittance flows continue to outpace expectations. With payments by expatriates worth a record $45 billion last year and increasing at more than 10% a year, it is little surprise that banks now want a piece of the action. Latin American and US banks are not only eyeing services to rival traditional wire services to bring in extra revenues, but also see money flows as a way to develop portfolios aimed at the small-scale Latin American customer, offering loans and mortgages.

by John Ferry

As senior bankers devise their new strategy for dealing profitably with resurgent Japanese corporations, they are struggling to define a new model of relationship banking.

594,900,000,000 The global dollar value of equity capital raised in 2005. The figure is up 4% from 2004 and is the highest since 2000.

Happy New Year to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The exchange needs all the good wishes it can get after getting off to a bad start this year. On January 18 the market was forced to close early when trading exceeded its troubled computer system’s daily capacity.

Peru’s retail banking market is almost unrecognizable from a decade ago. In the mid-1990s, when less than 15% of economically active Peruvians had a bank account, 26 banks were jockeying for business in a depressed local market, some with highly inadvisable lending policies.

After a year’s preparation, the French sovereign managed to combine innovation with excellent execution.

The Chilean investor wanted to buy Telmex debt. Deutsche Bank helped find a way to do it.

Like so many other aspects of Japan’s financial system, its pensions schemes are paying for the sins of the past and struggling to pay for the future. Existing reforms do not go far enough, says Chris Leahy, and flirt dangerously with the country’s future prosperity.

Even after the stock market’s dramatic climb in 2005 and sudden sell-off in mid-January, a wall of money is heading into Japanese equities, reports Peter Lee. Securing greater retail investment is seen as crucial to the reconstruction of Japan’s entire financial system. Privatization, new-economy IPOs, J-Reits and private equity exits will keep the investment bankers busy until the big blue chips are ready to issue once more. In the meantime, can someone please fix the TSE’s problems?

Several emerging market countries have discovered that oil is a bane not a blessing, destroying domestic development. The current crop of oil champions may have stabilization funds, but Theodore Kim explains how things can still go wrong.