January 2005

Around the world, hopes are high for what this year will bring. We take a look at the prospects in the key regions and emerging markets. As 2005 begins to unfold, investors and corporates around the world have plenty of ...

Slow Technology Take-up Hinders Forecasting Technological advances have made cash forecasting much more accurate. Many companies have yet to take advantage of the new capabilities, though. Ask any corporate treasurer or collections manager how they do their cash forecasting, and ...

World’s Best Foreign Exchange Banks 2005 Global Finance selects the leaders in the world’s biggest financial market. The recent slide in the value of the dollar has focused the eyes of the world on the foreign exchange markets, where the ...

Global Finance selects the leaders in the world’s biggest financial market. World’s Best Foreign Exchange Banks 2005 Regional Winners North America Citigroup Latin America Citigroup Western Europe Deutsche Bank Western Europe (Honorable Mention) BNP Western Europe (Honorable Mention) UBS Central ...

Argentina When Argentina unveils its Museum of Foreign Debt in March, organizers are not aiming for busloads of camera-toting tourists. Instead, they hope it will help Argentines grasp how it is that their country has been in a perennial headlock ...

Spain When BSCH, Spain’s largest bank, set out on a banking sector acquisition spree throughout Latin America a few years ago, many regarded its chairman, Emilio Botin, as a modern-day ‘conquistador.’ Today, Botin rules over BSCH from Ciudad Grupo Santander, ...

United States Ford Motor and General Motors are worried about their rollover and crash-test ratings. Not the ratings on their cars so much as the ratings on their debt. The bonds of both big US automakers are rated at one ...

Vive La Resolution!

For many people, the New Year is a time to take stock of their lives and to set goals for the year ahead...

Corporate Financing Focus Role of Insurance Grows in Global Debt Offerings as Complexity Increases Isbank of Turkey completed a $600 million securitization deal based on diversified payment rights on November 22, 2004, with Standard Chartered Bank as sole lead manager ...

Analysts Expect Dollar Déjà vu: More Losses The outlook for the dollar in 2005 depends on a host of factors, some of which nobody could possibly foresee. But the most likely scenario, analysts say, is a continued orderly decline, with ...

China Netcom’s IPO Raises $1.2 Billion China Netcom, China’s second-biggest fixed-line phone company, raised $1.2 billion in an initial public offering of shares in Hong Kong and American depositary receipts in New York. The company plans to spend half of ...

Private Equity Funds go Shopping in Europe New York-based private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, in its third European acquisition of 2004, led a group that agreed on November 30 to buy electrical equipment supplier Rexel from France’s Pinault-Printemps-Redoute ...

China Guo Shuqing, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, says that a huge balance-of-payments surplus is not a goal that China has pursued. However, it is something that China has achieved, at least in the case of its ...

United States It was an aggressive and tenacious 18-month corporate battle led by a CEO known for his samurai warrior style in taking Oracle from a company with less than a million dollars in sales in 1980 to one of ...

Brazil By using a careful blend of charm, patience and intelligence, Brazil’s finance minister has managed to nudge South America’s largest economy into one of its stablest periods in nearly decade. Since assuming the nation’s top finance post in January ...

United States John Snow as Treasury secretary and Alan Greenspan as the unflappable Federal Reserve chairman make a perfect double act. Snow says what he pleases, and Greenspan keeps the markets from falling apart. The mere fact that the show ...