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Wealthy Americans are getting more demanding when it comes to investment advice. Independent advisers claim to have tapped significant client defections from full-service brokers. The brokers say this is not happening. What's clear is that objective advice is a crucial selling point. Brokers need to do more than pile up new product offerings and must focus on their strengths, being prepared to offer their competitors' expertise when they lack it themselves.

The University of Virginia's endowment fund has put itself at the cutting edge of investment from university funds, wringing out high returns by inspired market timing and bold allocations to alternative asset classes. But can it keep working the magic, especially as it is looking for new leadership?

Forget PPP or indeed IPOs; what you should really be focusing on is PPLI. That's professional and personal life integration, in case you didn't know. US law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart has come up with this handy acronym because they've just appointed Jeannine Rupp, who has a masters degree in organizational and social psychology from the London School of Economics, to be director of the firm's PPLI initiative. This, says Peter Kalis, chair of K&L's management committee, will make lawyers “happier, more productive and thus better able to serve our clients notwithstanding the challenges of life in the 21st century”.

David Murrin isn't a run-of-the-mill hedge fund manager. His Soros-style investment strategies might not be for everyone and might appear daunting at first. After graduating with an honours degree from the University of Exeter in physics with geophysics, he spent two years working in oil exploration in the jungles of Papa New Guinea, living and working with local tribes and beginning to formulate personal theories on collective emotional behaviour. These have enabled him to develop a unique method of analyzing behavioural patterns in the markets. By his 30th birthday, Murrin wanted to be running his own business. In preparation, he spent the next seven and a half years at JPMorgan gathering skills in price prediction and modelling. He traded the major bond, interest rate, bullion, FX and equity index markets and founded and managed the European technical analysis group there. He co-founded Emergent Asset Management with Susan Payne in 1997.

In the past two years, Swedish private-equity house Industri Kapital has endured a protracted and difficult fund-raising process for its fifth fund, which ultimately closed at just a third of the original e2.5 billion target size. But after responding to investors' concerns by returning to its small to medium mid-cap focus and achieving a string of highly lucrative exits this year, the future looks brighter.

Belarus

After years of negotiations, Serbia has signed a deal with London Club creditors to restructure about $2.8 billion in debt. The deal paves the way for the sovereign's return to the capital markets later this year. But how will Serbia be received there, and who did the deal favour?

As Euromoney goes to press, Santander is set to take over the UK's Abbey National, propelling the Spanish bank into the frontline of European retail banking. But the past won't go away for Santander chairman Emilio Botín. The Spanish courts have ruled that he has serious charges to answer. At the same time minority shareholders who harangue him at Santander's AGM are planning to put their case to Abbey investors in London. Ben Sills reports from Madrid.

Not satisfied with issuing Russia's first investment grade bond and its first securitization, Gazprom has closed a $1.1 billion loan ? the largest since Russia's 1998 financial crisis.

SOCRAM has mandated BNP Paribas and Natexis Banques Populaires to lead-manage its new floating rate senior benchmark issue. The French company, dealing in automotive financing for French automotive mutual insurers, has issued a five-year bond with a coupon of 35 basis points over three-month Euribor. This issue enables SOCRAM to finance growth and refinance its debt profile.

A conference organised jointly by the European Commission and the Fédération des Experts Comptables Européens (FEE) yesterday concluded that International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) were essential to the development and strengthening of financial reporting by governments. David Devlin, president of FEE, the representative body of the European accountancy profession, said: ?Across Europe the public sector is responsible for about 40% of GDP. Hence, as the public sector moves from cash-based reporting to the introduction of accruals accounting, robust standards oriented to the circumstances of the public sector are essential. The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has developed a set of high quality standards to allow sound financial reporting by governments.?

SGCIB is on the hunt for finance executives as it looks to expand its high yield finance business in Europe over the coming months, focusing on the areas of media telecoms and leveraged finance. The high yield market in Europe hit a record high in 2003 at a value of ?16.3 billion and given monetary policy across the EU, declining default rates and a slowdown in the deterioration of credit quality, the prospects for 2004 are looking just as good.