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Faced with rising technology costs and regulatory change, fund managers are seeking to transfer more processes to their global custodians. In doing so, they are presenting service providers with a new set of challenges and opportunities. Rick Butler asks how far the trend to outsourcing can go

More and more Arab banks accept that they must embrace the internet or risk losing share in their home markets to more technology-savvy international players. National banks see the internet as a means to realize their regional ambitions. Change is under way across the region, perhaps most notably in Bahrain, traditionally the key offshore banking centre in the Gulf. Now Islamic banking and investment banking operations are growing up and offshore banking is becoming less prominent. The country’s leading offshore and local banks are rethinking their strategies and hope to become regional players.

When Glas Cymru won approval from Ofwat to restructure Welsh Water, it introduced a new model for privatized UK utilities that does away with conventional shareholders. Glas will break new ground by financing its purchase entirely through a securitization. But despite the problems caused by shareholders taking cash out of the industry that the regulator wants to go to customers, many water companies argue that equity still has a role to play in their funding structure. Steve Metcalfe reports on a debate that could force the restructuring of an entire sector and might yield lessons for other utilities

India has built an innovative, fast-growing export industry in IT services, software and equipment thanks to a highly skilled, low-cost workforce. However, the US slowdown has hit share prices of Indian IT companies hard and executives fear it could damage their revenues. Others are more sanguine, pointing out that a newly chastened, cost-conscious IT industry in the US will find India’s value-for-money outsourcing proposition even more attractive.

On a trip to Baroda, a dusty, remote town in western India, a senior executive from a multinational in Mumbai was astonished to find a small IT company that processes parking tickets for the New York Police Department.

The strategic resource that Indian IT companies rely on to grow at the recent cracking rate of 50% a year is the country’s pool of 340,000 technical professionals. Yet, if a recent study by consultants McKinsey is to be believed, that pool is not growing fast enough.

Euromoney collected data for its FX survey by polling named individuals at industrial and commercial corporations, financial institutions, institutional investors and state agencies.

Winners and losers reflect on the results.