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China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Corporation (CAO) the Singapore-listed subsidiary of mainland Chinese aviation fuel importer China Aviation Oil Holding Company (CAOH) announced in December a successful debt restructuring including significant investments from BP Investments Asia and Temasek Holdings.

The sales pitch for the EFG International IPO in October 2005 was that the bank would use the proceeds to continue to grow over the next three to five years at a comparable rate to the impressive expansion of the recent past.

“What surprised me when I became minister of finance was that we had the debt situation, but nobody wanted to talk about it. We need to first explain how we got into this position before we can talk about how we will get out of it.”

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange reported record FX volume on December 12. A total of 872,271 futures and option contracts were traded, representing $96 billion in notional value. This was 16.6% up on the previous record of 748,050 contracts, set on June 8 2005. Electronic transactions on the exchange’s Globex platform accounted for 71% of the turnover. Even though calendar rolls into the March contract inflated the total, if the CME can maintain levels at anywhere near the record, the debate on whether or not FX can migrate to an exchange-traded environment will grow louder.

In December, the UK’s Financial Services Authority held a meeting with the Association of British Insurers setting out its position on securitization and reinsurance for life insurers. All year there had been talk of monetization being a big story. Legal and General has been rumoured to have mandated a structuring mandate, and Standard Life was looking at both new business strain and value in force (VIF) structures before being overwhelmed with the process of demutualization. There has been talk of VIF securitizations coming from France and the Netherlands. However, some originators argue that the cost effectiveness of this approach is far from proved and question whether the six months or so spent working on structures is worth it. Also the competitiveness of reinsurance has improved dramatically in response to the capital market, especially for one-year maturity. But for a five-year maturity, a reinsurance treaty is twice as expensive as a capital markets solution. It appears that the FSA is trying to give greater guidance to issuers and arrangers on how to streamline the process; there are hopes for as many as four deals in 2006.

The sukuk market has bucked the general trend of lack of supply in Islamic finance.

Tier 1 perpetual CMS-linked products, once in high demand from private investors, have shown their dark side. Some deals have lost 20% of their value. Their highly illiquid nature means investors could be left high and dry. How did these inappropriate products come to be sold to an unsuitable investor base? Alex Chambers and Helen Avery report.

Leading international management consultancies have traditionally topped this category, with past winners including Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers. This year, although KPMG was an impressive challenger, Euromoney recognizes the work of local specialist Dar Al Istithmar.

Everyone seems to be making the decision to seek alpha in foreign exchange, but what does that entail? Leading figures in the FX market debate how to combine systematic and discretionary risk allocation, the importance of choosing the right managers, understanding volatility and whether or not the sell side has helped the transition to alpha.

Search the results Deutsche Bank attributes its Asian success to experienced relationship managers drawing on the best products from its own and other banks’ offerings

Banks scramble for the last of the rich pickings