Search results for

A small group of western-minded business leaders have banded together to lobby for a Russia free from robber barons and fit for their children by the year 2015.

Bulgaria’s new government is preparing to enter the Eurobond markets to reduce its debt service costs. The country’s strong recovery from the banking collapse and economic setbacks of 1996 and 1997, its recent currency stability and commitment to EU convergence should win it a strong reception among investors. But concerns persist over the credibility of the government’s ambitions to balance the budget, cut taxes and increase spending all at the same time.

Erste Bank sets its sights on large local corporates, a less coveted market for regional expansion, but one that could prove to have greater potential.

Despite the dire state of the Japanese economy, yen-denominated issues have maintained their popularity, providing borrowers useful diversity and a domestic investor base hungry for yield.

President Putin’s has pushed through a swathe of reforming laws, spearheading his drive to liberalization. But implementation will not be easy. Nor can it be assumed that the liberals will stay in the ascendancy. Business oligarchs and the conservatives are asserting themselves as Putin struggles to pick a way through conflicting interests.

Years from now, the banking crisis of today will probably be seen as the beginning of a period when market dominance started to pass to foreign hands.

Russia has done little to reform a banking sector that is still littered with hundreds of thinly capitalized and barely functioning institutions. But there are some signs of improvement. A stronger economy has made it more attractive for the larger commercial banks to start lending to Russian companies. It’s a new game for them.

Euromoney's September edition had already gone to press when news broke of the horriffc terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The sheer scale of the destruction and loss of life numbs the mind, making rational analysis almost impossible. Financial markets consist of nothing more than men and women buying and selling. In the immediate aftermath few could turn their minds to anything so mundane as dealing or stock tipping. It's likely that every reader of Euromoney will have known people who worked in the World Trade Centre and it is with those unfortunate individuals that most people's thoughts now lie.

Banks in the UAE have been tardy about consolidation and rationalization, relying on the benefits of continuing high oil prices. Now, though, they face the challenges of money-laundering investigators and impending WTO financial sector liberalization.

Global capital markets rarely look gloomy at both ends of the fund-raising spectrum, as the past year's momentous events indicate. The primary debt business is robust and active whereas equities are still shaking off the hangover that followed the indulgences of the tech stock party. Jonathan Brown sketches in the background to this year's Euromoney capital-raising poll which the universal banks dominate

Washington's battles with big budget deficits may seem like a distant memory, but a familiar refrain from those days has taken on new meaning for the IMF. "Less is more" has been a powerful, if unstated, theme running through many Fund-led packages, ever since the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-95.

The Russian population is increasingly confident about the future. The country is enjoying trade and budget surpluses. Economists, though, fret about the implications of high inflation, while growth depends heavily on continued high oil prices and a sound debt repayment strategy.