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Venezuelans woke up on Christmas Day to find that Santa Claus had given them a brand-new toy: a Hugo Chávez action doll. In fact the doll was Venezuela’s best-selling toy this Christmas.

At the end of December, a consortium of international investors led by Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia purchased a 14.3% stake in Anhui Conch Cement Company Limited (ACCC) from its parent company for an undisclosed sum. ACCC, which is listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai, is the largest cement manufacturer in China and fifth in the world. Fuelled by China’s construction frenzy, ACCC’s cement sales in the first three quarters of 2005 increased 56% over the equivalent period in 2004. The Morgan Stanley investment consortium included the International Finance Corporation.

With negotiations for Turkey’s entry to the EU under way – albeit with a long lead-in time – completed privatizations, foreign direct investment and domestic deal-making are growing apace despite continuing bureaucratic hold-ups. David Judson reports.

Claire Bright is suing HBOS for sex discrimination and wrongful dismissal. Cliff Pattenden, head of treasury at the UK bank, is cited in the suit in which Bright is claiming a whopping £11million ($19.6 million) compensation [see Hybrid capital: It all ends in tiers, November issue for background on Bright’s departure).

“Some of the other banks closed their internet offerings at 9pm. Just think about that for a minute. ‘The internet is closed.’”

In 2005, the Nikkei equity index shot ahead by 40% while 10-year Japanese government bond yields inched higher by just 15bp.

Investment banks take their branding very, very seriously. The agonizing over choice of name, fonts and colour schemes can be endless – and extremely costly.

The UK’s Financial Services Authority is working on rules for UK covered bonds. Bankers hope that the regulator will announce at the February 7 Zurich meeting of the European Covered Bond Council plans for a framework for UK financial institutions. Abbey, HBOS, Northern Rock, Nationwide and Bradford & Bingley have all issued covered bonds using UK contract law. But because the UK has not introduced a special public supervision, UK covered bonds attract a 20% risk weighting for BIS restricted investors as opposed to the 10% enjoyed by investors for bonds issued where there is such supervision or specific covered bond law. This puts the UK issuers at a disadvantage as their bonds price wider. This development is a volte-face by the regulator. It initially had a conservative stance on the structure, placing an unofficial limit on the proportion of their overall balance sheets UK issuers could sell as covered bonds.

KfW inaugurated its 2006 euro benchmark programme with a blowout €5 billion 15-year deal, the first time the German agency has issued in this maturity. The deal is able to take full advantage of demand from pension funds and insurers for long-dated assets. Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch had a €10 billion order book after just one day. Pricing was 2 basis points through the 15-year swaps rate or 11bp over the April 2021 OAT.

Emerging market sovereigns that issue heavily in debt markets should prepare for higher borrowing costs.

Second-tier triple-A issuers have an opportunity to close the funding gap on KfW and EIB.

The borrower makes disappointing start to wave of telco financing.