Search results for

Russia’s central bank is launching a controversial new scheme aimed at creating stability and competition. Deputy central bank chairman Andrei Kozlov explains why the reforms are needed.

Citibank opened its first retail branch in Moscow in November as Russia's leading commercial banks begin to slug it out for Russia's retail banking business.

"I wish my last year had been in better times," sighs Albrecht Schmidt, soon-to-be ex-CEO of HypoVereinsbank, over lunch in a London restaurant. "There's still so much to do." Officially Schmidt is still CEO until January - the changeover was bought forward from May to pacify investors - but when Euromoney meets him in mid-November, he's already handed over day-to-day responsibility to the new CEO Dieter Rampl. Schmidt now spends his time shuttling between Munich, Brussels and London in his job as an ambassador for the Munich Finanzplatz.

Few if any currency managers attempt to forecast precise exchange rates. The trick is to predict directional moves. Different managers work to different time horizons but, broadly speaking, currency management can be separated into two categories: a technicals-based approach and one that looks to fundamentals.

If the role of a banking system is to finance corporates through the bad times as well as the good, the German system is failing. At least that's what the recent decision by the Federal government to establish a Mittelstand bank strongly suggests.

Indices

A radical overhaul of Russia's creaking pension system is set to release billions of dollars into the country's debt and equity markets over the next few years and will stimulate dramatic growth of the financial industry.

Deutsche Telekom hasn't been that successful in 2002 in making asset disposals or cutting debt. The sale of its cable businesses, for example, has been delayed and the price it is negotiating is unlikely to reach the e2.5 billion it predicted halfway though the year.

A pioneer of foreign investment in post-Soviet Russia, Bill Browder has battled with corporate misdeeds and tracked the “bad guys” to take his Hermitage fund up 446% since 1996.

It was billed as a "good-natured rugby challenge amongst representatives of corporate Hong Kong". But last month's Professions Sevens 2002 tournament, with CSFB, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, CLSA and HSBC among those fielding teams, turned into a free-for-all.

Few would dispute that 2002 was an awful year for equities. The MSCI World index plunged nearly 20% and the same was true for the MSCI North America and MSCI Europe. While stock markets and investors' portfolios crashed in nearly every developed market except for New Zealand (where the index rose 16.2% last year) and Austria (up 9.5%), net capital flows to emerging markets turned negative.

A complex debt exchange during a merger transaction saved AT&T Broadband and Comcast the expense and the hassle of raising new debt. Bankers won’t want other companies to follow suit.