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Rash of strategic sales and IPOs planned.

Africa:

In an open letter to market participants, the New York-based Foreign Exchange Committee has warned about some of the dangers posed by the advent of retail FX products. The committee says technology often separates “the wholesale foreign exchange dealer from the end user, perhaps by multiple intermediaries”. This makes it difficult for banks to “know their customer”, and possibly hampers such compliance measures as anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism obligations.

A recent report by BreakingViews has revived the familiar story that EBS is up for sale, claiming that the company was hawking itself around via its adviser, Citigroup. The £1 billion ($1.8 billion) valuation that BreakingViews has put on EBS looks a little toppy and might well scare potential suitors away. Back-of-the-fag-packet calculations suggest that EBS captures about 20% of the total spot market. As FX volumes are still expected to grow, and EBS could quite conceivably increase its market share, someone with deep pockets might well decide it is worth a punt, even at £1 billion. However, whether its multiple owners will ever agree on the attractions of a suitor remains to be seen.

In early December HSBC and Deutsche Bank simultaneously engaged in a charity event to raise funds for London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital’s development fund. In order to entice its workers to stump up some cash, the two banks had a number of celebrities tour their trading floors.

The markets revere individualists who are prepared to follow their hunches – think Soros, Buffett or Kerkorian. But are the many actually smarter than the few?

Congratulations to the winner of the inaugural Euromoney award for media relations. This bank, before pitching a CDO as part of our deals of the year research, invited the relevant Euromoney journalists to sign a beautifully drafted, five-page confidentiality agreement.

When Malcolm Glazer bought UK Premiership football club Manchester United in May, alarm bells rang. The £790.3 million ($1.4 billion) deal was partly funded by a high-cost loan of £275 million from three US hedge funds, and subject to strict ebitda targets over the first two years.

Euromoney reports on the innovations driving the market forward, and profiles the winners of latest Islamic finance awards.

If Mifid forces banks to physically trade illiquid bonds they publish prices on, they won’t risk their capital.

Although Asia remains in the vanguard of private banking growth, a new survey from Boston Consulting Group highlights key challenges ahead.