Global news and insight for corporate financial professionals
As many people die from preventable causes every week in Africa as died in the recent tsunami. Now, however, Southern Africa’s struggling nations have reason to hope. As 2005 begins to unfold, investors and corporates around the world have plenty ...
Africa’s New Wave Of Hope Investment Remains Elusive With so many countries’ economies largely dependent on external funding, it is difficult for many nations in Southern Africa to lure foreign investment without exacerbating poverty. Poverty levels in Southern Africa have ...
Africa’s New Wave Of Hope Lands of Lost Opportunity Endowed with a huge land mass and immense natural resources, Southern Africa offers an important market opportunity for countries both in the region and outside. Many of Southern Africa’s governments have ...
Africa’s New Wave Of Hope Positive Impact - Eventually Romilly Greenhill of UK-based charity ActionAid believes the increased focus on aid and development that has been triggered by the tsunami will ultimately benefit Africa. “It needs the media and campaigners ...
Africa’s New Wave Of Hope Sharing the Debt Burden Many countries in Southern Africa have long been lobbying for the cancellation of their foreign debts. During a recent Southern African Development Community summit in Windhoek, Namibia, retired President of Mozambique ...
Africa’s New Wave Of Hope Signs of Hope Emerge Aid is working in some countries, though, and these might serve as an inspiration. Uganda, for example, used aid to remove the charges on basic health services, prompting a massive increase ...
Stronger equity valuations fail to float many US pension plans that had found themselves under water. Corporate pension plans will no doubt be handing their chief financial officers some sleepless nights this year as the financially troubled plans start to ...
An increasing focus on corporate expenditure and on transparency is bringing a renewed focus on the potential benefits of corporate credit cards and purchasing cards. In sharp contrast to the consumer world, commercial cards are not necessarily equated with unbridled ...
Changes in clients’ needs are driving global custodians beyond their traditional roles Placido: "Margin pressure is forcing the closer integration of vanilla-execution and post-trade processing" For almost a decade consolidation and the drive to reduce costs has characterized the global ...
Customers and competitors may be among the biggest winners after Oracle seals the deal to acquire PeopleSoft. It took more than 18 months to complete and will go down as one of the most acrimonious mergers in recent history, but ...
Global Finance selects the leaders in a specialized area of finance that is benefiting from a surge in global trade. Late last year, Deutsche Bank closed a $100 million syndicated insured receivables purchase facility for Sadia, one of Brazil’s largest ...
World’s Best Trade Finance Banks 2005 Global Finance selects the leaders in a specialized area of finance that is benefiting from a surge in global trade. World’s Best Trade Finance Banks 2005 REGION COUNTRY Americas Citigroup Europe ABN AMRO Central ...
As many people die from preventable causes every week in Africa as died in the recent tsunami. Now, however, Southern Africa’s struggling nations have reason to hope. As 2005 begins to unfold, investors and corporates around the world have plenty ...
Changes in clients’ needs are driving global custodians beyond their traditional roles Placido: "Margin pressure is forcing the closer integration of vanilla-execution and post-trade processing" For almost a decade consolidation and the drive to reduce costs has characterized the global ...
Global Equity/DRs Initial public offerings from Latin America are heating up, but companies based in the developing nations of Asia are likely to once again be the biggest issuers of depositary receipts to raise equity capital this year, bankers say. ...
India The Indian government is moving to liberalize rules that govern foreign investment in India. The government intends to ease regulations that compel a foreign company with a joint venture in India to seek the federal government’s permission to set ...
Brazil Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is feeling the heat from political opponents, as his ruling coalition begins to unravel. The decision by the PMDB Party to leave the government last December dealt a severe blow to the ...
Russia An exceptionally long holiday slumber—with an official New Year’s break that extended from January 1 through January 10—in Russia was preceded by a final chapter in the so-called Yukos affair. On December 19 the company’s main asset, production subsidiary ...
China It’s been a rocky month for China. In Singapore, a court gave China Aviation Oil (CAO) six weeks to formulate a rescue plan after it came to light that the company had suffered losses of $550 million in speculative ...
Global Finance selects the leaders in a specialized area of finance that is benefiting from a surge in global trade. Late last year, Deutsche Bank closed a $100 million syndicated insured receivables purchase facility for Sadia, one of Brazil’s largest ...
Latin America The US dollar may once have been the currency of choice for Latin American debt issuers eager to fill their coffers with the hard currency. But with the greenback turning soft, the region's issuers are beginning to issue ...
Europe The European Commission has finally adopted a directive on minimum transparency requirements for listed companies. Under the directive, shareholders and the public will have access to the sort of information that investors in the US and the UK have ...
Qatar/United Kingdom Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil secured funding in December for the $12 billion Qatargas II project, which will supply LNG from Qatar to the UK beginning in 2007. The $7.6 billion bank financing for the venture, the largest energy-project ...
United States AES, a leading global power company based in Arlington, Virginia, agreed in January to acquire SeaWest Holdings, a privately owned wind-generation operating and development company, for approximately $60 million in cash. San Diego, California-based SeaWest operates electricity-generating wind ...
Foreign Exchange The dollar’s rally in early January reflected optimism about the United States economy and the prospect for higher interest rates, as well as year-end repositioning in the greenback by market participants, analysts say. "We believe that this dollar ...
Global Equity/DRs Initial public offerings from Latin America are heating up, but companies based in the developing nations of Asia are likely to once again be the biggest issuers of depositary receipts to raise equity capital this year, bankers say. ...
Telecom Mergers Cap $1.9 Trillion Year Telecom mergers on both sides of the Atlantic contributed to the biggest deal total on record for December, with more than $300 billion of global M&A; transactions announced in the final month of 2004, ...
Corporate Debt A growing US economy will lead to rising interest rates and a more challenging climate for bond issuance in 2005, according to the Bond Market Association. Total US bond issuance is expected to fall 15% this year, with ...
France Is Euro Disney about to recover after three years of malaise? The Paris, France-based theme park-by far the largest in Europe-believes a forthcoming restructuring and fundraising will set it on its way. Investors might not be cheering just yet, ...
Argentina Among international bondholders, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner has made few friends recently. After all, Kirchner has asked bondholders to take a 70% loss on their Argentine holdings and has turned a deaf ear to their pleas for a less ...
Libya Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya’s flamboyant leader since a 1969 coup, did his country a big favor when he came in from the cold last year. By ingratiating himself with the West and agreeing to dismantle Libya’s weapons of mass ...
