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Issuer: RHM Finance Amount: £650 million Type of issue: whole-business securitization Date of issue: February 28 Arranger: JP Morgan

With south-east Asian economies recovering, governments are making cautious moves to restructure and expand their power industries to meet increased demand. None wants a California-style crisis. However, foreign investor interest is likely to be limited and financing must be provided by local debt and equity markets.

In a world where sovereign bondholders are disparate and disunited they are hard pressed to get a good deal if a defaulting sovereign and its bank advisers devise a unilateral exchange offer or other restructuring. With the often bitter experience of three such restructurings behind them, bondholders are getting together to protect their position.

The huge growth in the number of European corporates of varying credit quality tapping the capital markets has led to massive demand for ratings. The ratings agencies are staffing up to meet this challenge. But there remains a question mark over the value of the service they provide, especially in high yield, the most credit-intensive area of all.

In Russia, large financial-industrial groups exist alongside a new breed of commercially-minded and successful industrial groups that have made their money by more traditional and honest means.

On February 28, Indian finance minister Yashwant Sinha announced an annual budget that should have given a strong push to economic growth. Tax cuts, a sharp cut in interest rates and a raising of the ceiling on foreign portfolio investment in Indian companies should have given the stock markets the boost they badly needed.

Chile is reckoned to be the best organized country in Latin America, so no-one was expecting any surprises when Santiago was chosen to host the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) annual meetings in March. It was expected that there would be lots of optimism about Mexico and its investment-grade credit rating, optimism too about the surprisingly smooth way in which the Peruvian elections seem to be panning out, and positive noises about a US soft landing and the way in which Argentina, with the help of the IMF, was attempting to extricate itself from economic stagnation.

The German Pfandbrief market, in particular the jumbo sector, has grown dramatically in recent years and assumed a larger and larger slice of European bond fund managers’ portfolios. But now many of the leading issuers face significant challenges in the underlying lending businesses that generate Pfandbrief collateral. The German mortgage banks are seeking non-traditional business opportunities, as well as starting to sort out their underperforming mortgage lending businesses. Volumes are likely to shrink.

Turkish banks will have to roll over $6 billion in syndicated debt this year. Though first-tier banks will be able to roll over, albeit at higher interest rates, life will not be so easy for medium-sized and smaller banks.

The Emerging Market Creditors Association is becoming nervous because Ecuador included exit constraints in its exchange offer. Now they have been used successfully once, they may be used again elsewhere.

Last month's announcement of a merger between DG Bank and GZ Bank was a long awaited step in the consolidation of the top level of Germany's cooperative banking sector.

Credit default swaps have proved a popular derivatives instrument with banks and other credit investors, but one possible trigger for default – the restructuring of a bond or loan – has cast uncertainty over the market. It is possible that liquidity might be damaged by the proliferation of different classes of instruments.