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William McDonough, chairman of The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, told reporters at The Economic Club of Washington’s Winter Luncheon Meeting on Wednesday that hundreds of public companies still owe the Board dues. "Those companies that have not paid cannot get a clean opinion from their auditor," says McDonough.

Europe’s corporates are lagging behind their US counterparts when it comes to competing in the global marketplace due to a lack of political and economic co-operation, according to a report issued by KPMG.

The good news, according to S&Ps chief economist David Wyss, is that the global economic recession wasn’t really much of a recession at all. The bad news, however, is that the global recovery isn’t really much to be get excited about, either.

Permal, part of French group Worms & Cie, announced last month that it had launched its first Islamic hedge fund.

New financial legislation and infrastructure in Dubai and Saudi Arabia give them the opportunity to challenge Bahrain's position as the Middle East's prime financial centre. Nigel Dudley reports.

Mortgage-backed deals continued to dominate European structured finance in 2003 but deals funding complex infrastructure projects began to make a big splash, with monoline insurers taking on an indispensable role. Mark Brown reports.

One exchange's successful capture of liquidity from another is a rare event. So why are both the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse attempting to take Dutch equities business away from Euronext? Peter Koh reports

Led by imaginative sovereign issues, Latin American bond markets made a remarkable recovery this year. Corporates are now joining the bandwagon as sovereign yields come down. Felix Salmon reports.

As the demand for Latin bonds strengthened over 2003, so did the supply, at least in terms of the number of investment banks competing for mandates. After years of a shrinking market as a result of banks pulling out or merging, the number of players is increasing again, as a consequence of European commercial banks deciding that debt capital markets activity is a good complement to lending operations.

"We've got three dollars to the pound," used to be one of the songs favoured by England's Barmy Army cricket fans on their tours to Australia. The slur on Australia's sliding currency, sometimes dubbed the Aussie peso, was one of the few ways they could get back at their hosts, who regularly thrashed them on the field.

With Greece scheduled to hold general elections next spring, the conservative New Democracy party currently has a solid lead in the polls. The party's shadow finance minister, George Alogoskoufis (pictured), says Greece should change its economic policy mix to place greater emphasis on fiscal consolidation and the liberalization of certain markets to boost competitiveness and growth prospects. "The real picture of the Greek economy is not reflected in the GDP growth numbers. Special factors such as the preparations for the 2004 Olympic Games and the speeding up of older projects have boosted GDP," Alogoskoufis tells Euromoney. "The budget deficit is widening, the public debt exceeds 100% of GDP, inflation is among the highest in the EU, and the economy's international competitiveness is low, as evidenced by the large current account deficit and the rankings of international organizations. The public sector is still characterized by bureaucracy and corruption."