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Roberto Junguito, finance minister of Colombia, had a good Inter-American Development Bank meeting in Milan. He secured hefty funding commitments from the IADB as well as from Andean development bank, Corporación Andina de Fomento. To top it off, he received the Euromoney award for economic achievement in the Andes from the president of CAF, Enrique García who says Hunguito is a determined negotiator. García should know: CAF has just promised Colombia $3.5 billion. Hunguito modestly shared his award with his young team. "When I was minister of finance in the 1980s, I worked with their parents," he joked.

"Guess who I had in the back of my cab," is a refrain familiar to Londoners. "Not an investment banker," might now be an appropriate response.

Pension fund trustees can find equity derivatives confusing. At the NAPF conference in Edinburgh last month a baffled but brave trustee stood up to ask how he could cut through the "black art and mumbo jumbo" of these instruments.

Mexico was the first emerging-market issuer to include collective action clauses in an SEC-registered bond. That gave it a one-off opportunity to write its own documentation unburdened by precedent. Now the CAC route looks like the clear way forward.

With a large trade debt outstanding from Iraq and lucrative oil contracts there hanging fire, Russia’s reluctance to toe the US line is understandable, especially in the context of a broader desire to re-establish regional ties.

Serbia

Many banks are reluctant to spell out how they make money in derivatives but SG's black box is even blacker than most. "It's very difficult for us to understand where it gets its money from," admits Eric Hazart, an analyst at Exane in Paris.

Like an old pair of slippers, retail banking is the division Société Générale knows it can rely on for a bit of comfort. When times are bad - as they have been lately - retail revenues, which comprise 60% of the group's total, provide a welcome buffer. "For French banks in general and SocGen in particular, retail banking really is a cash cow," says Guillaume Tiberghien, an analyst at Fox-Pitt, Kelton.

With foreign companies eager to sew up deals in China’s mega market and Chinese corporates keen to expand abroad, M&A bankers expect growing business in the People’s Republic.

India

Egypt

It all sounds worryingly familiar. Mutual funds are experiencing record inflows, issuance is at record highs, prices of the securities concerned seem to be immune to bad news, and the investment banking divisions covering these popular products are going gangbusters.