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The last round of deal-making in Portugal’s banking sector has now come to a halt. Another round of consolidation may follow, as the newly-merged banks continue to eye each other.

The jaws of a trap are closing on Europe’s telecom companies. Credit rating agencies and debt providers will punish them unless they reduce the huge debts they took on to build in new markets. The telecom companies have promised to do this by floating subsidiaries and selling assets. But the very equity investors that encouraged them to leverage up and go for growth won’t buy these now. The banks won’t lend either and more downgrades are likely. The scales have fallen from debt and equity investors’ eyes. Where once stood, solid, dependable, utility-like incumbents, they now see risky, new-economy companies that have bet heavily on unproven technology and have limited access to the funding needed to make it pay. The telecom companies may have to take drastic action in order to survive.

Prescient, a pioneer of direct debt issuance over the internet, intends to expand into other products in the coming months, with the next target being certificates of deposits in the US.

Portugal’s economy is in great shape, unemployment is low by European standards and government borrowing requirements are steadily falling. That is the good news. Less auspicious is the fact that Portugal is saddled with structural imbalances and competitiveness vis-à-vis other economies with relatively low labour costs is steadily deteriorating.

Accounting for some 90% of dealer-to-customer trading in US government securities, TradeWeb is the most successful internet bond dealership yet established.

Argentina is now number eight in a quarter-trillion dollar stream of rescue packages to bolster the credit of threatened emerging economies. Mexico was the first in 1995, recipient of what was supposed to be a one-time $50 billion ransom for world stability. But that failed to factor in the next round of play. Instead, crises have impacted more often and with greater force and will continue to do so as past example teaches the markets that speculation is protected by a G7 guarantee. Adam Lerrick proposes that the private sector should provide the first line of defence with standby financing subsidized by the IMF as a global public good

The Portuguese bond market is caught in a pincer grip. More liquidity is required to attract foreign investors but that can only be achieved if the trend for domestic investors to move to other euro markets is at least partly reversed. Some success in improving the situation has been achieved but there is much still to be done.

A joint venture that can only be described as a success, Nikko Salomon Smith Barney is a rare creature, and other banks in Japan are green with envy.

The existence of the Sparkassen and Landesbanken is derived from their public mission, but, when everything else is being privatized, why should banks be an exception.

Berlin has not quite finished growing together, though it's well on the way to being rebuilt, with the near-completion of the Potsdamer Platz project.

In the first two months of this year there has been a dramatic reconfiguration of market variables in the US, including interest rates, credit spreads and the yield curve. Both a result of and contributing to these seismic shifts in the financial landscape has been business completed by mortgage portfolios to hedge negative convexity. Dealers have been rocked on their feet by the scale of volatility buying, and the fear that if rates back up, the mortgage holders will unwind the positions and sell convexity, making any general market sell-off much more severe than would otherwise be the case.

Merrill Lynch is reshuffling its European investment banking division to create a new structured credit unit.