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The highly volatile debt capital markets of the past 12 months have provided an extraordinary set of challenges to borrowers, whether they be highly experienced and well-rated issuers or less creditworthy newcomers.

Credit derivatives are at the heart of credit markets, yet a mystique prevails among those on the outside of the financial industry over exactly how they operate. Stephen Stonberg of Deutsche Bank examines the future of the credit derivatives market.

In the back parlours of the financial markets, where credit derivatives meet securitization, bankers are slicing and dicing credit to create a grand smorgasbord of investment products. The names of these delicacies are confusing, the recipes are closely guarded secrets and each firm has its own unique house style. But for firms and bankers with the requisite know-how, there is plenty of money to be made. The top credit structurers – bankers with a background in quant, an understanding of credit and a flair for complex legal contracts – can name their price.

Europe’s newly emerging mass affluent are the latest target – and the latest obsession – for financial services operators. However many players have yet to unveil either a clear strategy or the right products. Indeed some big names have already decided to cut their considerable losses and leave the market behind, convinced they won’t be able to make it pay. But whoever comes up with the winning formula is likely to enjoy a bonanza.

With banks increasingly consolidating or at least cross-linking their debt-arranger activities, Euromoney has concluded that its annual bond, loan and MTN rankings should appear as a single table. In this introduction to the results, Jennifer Morris looks at the ways in which boundaries between different areas of debt are becoming blurred and assesses the challenge to investment banks’ core business from commercial banks

Mergers drive many of the changes in the annual rankings of banks by shareholders’ equity. American and Japanese groups retain the top spots. But European banks have the market capitalizations to grow further through acquisition. By Andrew Newby, data from Moody’s.

When Julian Simmonds, global head of foreign exchange and structured products businesses at Citigroup, announced his decision to retire this May, it sent shockwaves through the bank. Senior executives are thought to be trying to talk Simmonds, who joined Citibank in 1972 and achieved prominence by building its forex business into the undisputed market leader in the 1980s and 1990s, into hanging round a little longer. "No one event has prompted my decision," Simmonds tells Euromoney. "But 29 years is a long, long time in a high pressure position. I have outside interests, as has my wife and I'd like to participate in those with her."

Global head of corporate finance and recovery, PriceWaterhouse Coopers

The best guess as to the eventual size of Chinese banks’ bad debts is that they will be many times larger than initial official estimates. In a desperate effort to clean up their balance sheets, banks have shifted bad debts to asset management companies. But there’s no sign that these can offload them to new money investors or engineer decent recovery rates. And there’s plenty more to come. Ministers may feel a little queasy when they get the final bill.

Peter Hancock has made quite a name for himself as a talented banker, skillful innovator and determined risk-taker. So when he addressed Isda's AGM in Washington last month, he was guaranteed a good turnout. But, as the audience quickly realized, Hancock has a talent for saying a lot while giving little away.

The most famous face in fund management in the City talks about the fruitless efforts by tabloid newspapers to dig up details of her private life in the wake of her departure from Morgan Grenfell four years ago.

If Silvio Berlusconi and Italy's new centre-right coalition take power they will depend heavily on Milanese tax lawyer and academic Giulio Tremonti to win and maintain the trust of the financial markets.