Search results for

Country Risk December 1997: It could be worse

Now that the high profile equity and corporate finance advisory parts of BZW have been sold, members of the surviving debt markets division, Barclays Capital, have a tricky time ahead. They must convince their customers that the advantages of dealing with a fully integrated investment bank - advantages which they loudly proclaimed for the 11 years in which Barclays spent £750 million ($1.2 billion) trying to build such a creature - are bunk. Now they must argue that the best type of investment bank to deal with is one focused on its chosen strengths. But the question persists: does Barclays Capital have any strengths beyond sterling bonds and syndicated loans? Even while peddling their new line, those at Barclays Capital must privately question how deep is their own parent's commitment to its new-form investment bank.

It is hard to judge which was the worst piece of news to hit the Malaysian stock market and corporate community in the last few months. Was it the remarks made by prime minister Mahathir Mohamad blaming international speculators for the Asian meltdown?

No one expects to spend their whole career with one employer, but the ability to move from one job to another with relative ease is taken for granted. But what if your career suffers because you've been made the target of defamatory rumours, or because your company is found to be engaged in disreputable behaviour? A decision in the British House of Lords last month could help, as it now entitles employees to sue for damages called stigma compensation.

Only the best will survive

Only the best will survive

If there's ever been a better reason to begin or renew your subscription to Euromoney, this is it. We're told that the Bank of Japan only found out about Yamaichi's off-balance-sheet losses the Saturday before the securities house went into liquidation last month.

When Jan McCourt fell victim to staff trimming at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson this summer, his first reaction was to look for another City job. He then had a change of heart, and left his 14-year career in finance, to run a small farm in the heart of England. He specializes in providing naturally reared meats, with the motto: "You may not be interested in the life history of a piece of meat on your plate. Well you should be!"

The first investment-management company in the Gulf region managed by ladies for the benefit of ladies will be inaugurated in January 1998. The Qatar Ladies Investment Company is the brainchild of 28-year-old managing director and shareholder Sheikha Hanadi Al Thani who saw a need to fill the very large gap in women's finance in her country.

There could yet be one beneficiary from the collapse of Yamichi: Frank Partnoy, author of recently published FIASCO, subtitled Blood in the Water on Wall Street. The former emerging-markets derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley exposes the aggression and greed that drove derivatives teams to take advantage of naive clients during the mid-1990s.

Investors who bought shares in Ionica at £3.90 ($6.40) during the innovative UK telephone company's public flotation led by SBC Warburg Dillon Read in June, have soon regretted that decision. Just four months later in November, Ionica issued a warning of a slowdown in sales. It announced a first-half loss of £77.2 million. Worryingly, problems of insufficient base station capacity, a delay in implementing a crucial software programme as well as the company's own imposition of new credit controls on customers, had together slowed its drive to sign up new paying subscribers. The news sent the share price tumbling to £1.56.

Asian banks: Now comes the real crisis