January 2012

COVER STORY: ALTERNATIVE FINANCING   By Laurence Neville   Small and medium-size companies are vital to economic growth and critical to corporate supply chains. Yet traditional lending is virtually closed to SMEs in most markets—certainly in developed markets of the West. ...

ANNUAL SURVEY & AWARDS: FX PROVIDERS BET BIG ON TECHNOLOGY   By Gordon Platt   The most successful FX banks are boosting their IT spending and competing on price and service in an effort to maintain market share.   As the ...

By Gordon Platt BEST FOREIGN EXCHANGE PROVIDERS: GLOBAL WINNER Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank has managed to stay on top of the FX world year after year. It has the biggest, most diversified and most profitable foreign exchange operation of any ...

By Gordon Platt BEST FOREIGN EXCHANGE PROVIDERS: REGIONAL WINNERS NORTH AMERICA Citi Feig, Citi: We have invested in people and technology and are seeing our market share rise as a result As Citi prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary in ...

By Gordon Platt BEST FOREIGN EXCHANGE RESEARCH & ANALYSIS RESEARCH BNY Mellon BNY Mellon, one of the largest foreign exchange dealers in the United States, offers support in virtually all currencies, with particular expertise in emerging markets.   Derrick, BNY Mellon ...

AWARDS CEREMONY : LOCATION BEIJING   China’s Bright Lights     Global Finance hosted its annual Stars of China awards ceremony and dinner in Beijing in November. Banks and companies were honored for their outstanding performance over the past year. ...

By Gordon Platt BEST ONLINE FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRADING SYSTEMS BANK SYSTEM State Street’s Currenex The Currenex foreign exchange trading platform uses patented technology to match orders and aggregate liquidity. Its high-speed, low-latency API (application programming interface) provides access to live, ...

EMERGING MARKETS INVESTOR: DR NEWS   By Gordon Platt   New unsponsored American depositary receipt (ADR) program creation is likely to slow down in the short to medium term, according to a report by Celent, a Boston-based financial research and consulting ...

EMERGING MARKETS INVESTOR: NEWS   By Gordon Platt   The Bolsa Mexicana de Valores exchange in Mexico City says it will introduce faster trading technology by the middle of 2012 in an effort to attract more high-frequency traders.   BMV says ...

NIGERIAN INBOUND INVESTMENT FRAMEWORK IMPROVING   By Antonio Guerrero   Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan says his administration is reviewing industrial policies to encourage foreign companies exporting finished goods to Nigeria to instead manufacture them locally.   New policies encourage local assembly ...

TAX CUTS TO RESTART THE BRAZILIAN ECONOMY   By Antonio Guerrero   Aiming to shield the economy from the potential fallout of Europe’s debt crisis, the Brazilian government took fiscal policy steps that include $1.5 billion in tax cuts.   Chevron ...

CHINESE REGULATORS TARGET ANTI-COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOR IN STATE-OWNED FIRMS   By Thomas Clouse   Chinese regulators have targeted state-owned enterprises in an anti-monopoly investigation for the first time.   Photo Credit: Chen Wei Seng / Shutterstock.com China’s two largest fixed-line telephone operators—China ...

SINKING PUPEE AFFECTS CORPORATE DEBT REPAYMENT   By Aaron Chaze   Corporate borrowers in India have been hard hit by the rupee slide—the currency fell 18% over the dollar between January and November, 2011, and fell 7% in November alone.   ...

SANCTIONS ON IRAN INCREASE   By Gordon Platt   Two days after the storming of the UK embassy in Tehran on November 29 to protest increased British sanctions on Iran, the US Senate unanimously passed new economic sanctions against Iran and ...

WHILE PROFITS SOAR, SBERBANK HALTS FOREIGN INVESTMENTS   By Kim Iskyan   Russian state savings bank Sberbank posted a 74% jump in third-quarter profits in late November on the back of sharp growth in lending.   Putin gets poor response in ...

POLISH COPPER, SILVER MINER ROLLS WITH THE PUNCHES   By Gordon Platt   After KGHM Polska Miedź reported that its third-quarter 2011 profits had tripled from the same period a year earlier, the Polish government immediately announced a significant increase in ...

WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY   By Matt Greco   Global Finance sat down with Martin Fridson, high-yield market specialist and global credit strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, in early December to get his take on US and global debt markets ...

LONG-TERM VISION   By Justin Keay   Kuwait’s development in recent years has been driven by the state, with little FDI. However, upcoming elections promise a new government that could improve the business climate for foreign investors.   When protesters ...

MILESTONES: US/GERMANY   By Gordon Platt   Facing a $4 billion breakup fee, AT&T is working hard to make its proposed merger with T-Mobile a reality, despite regulatory stumbling blocks.   Deal to create the largest US wireless carrier is in ...

MILESTONES: UKRAINE   By Kim Iskyan   The IMF’s $15 billion loan program to Ukraine looks increasingly likely to be suspended at least until parliamentary elections in October 2012, following an early November visit by the IMF that ended without recommending the resumption ...

MILESTONES: MYANMAR   By Thomas Clouse   Preparing to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014, Myanmar is also opening its doors to foreign investment.   A new dawn breaks in Myanmar, which is open for business Leaders from ASEAN’s ...

MILESTONES: TORONTO   By Erik Heinrich   Canada’s financial capital is on track to become one of the largest global banking centers—overtaking London in the number of banking jobs by 2017, according to Moody’s Analytics.   Toronto to overtake London in banking ...

CORPORATE FINANCING NEWS: FOREIGN EXCHANGE   By Gordon Platt   Another EU summit ended in December with agreement on a new fiscal compact for the eurozone, but like previous efforts to rescue the common currency, the accord was less than comprehensive, and ...

CORPORATE FINANCING NEWS: CORPORATE DEBT   By Gordon Platt   New-issuance volume in the US high-yield market rose sharply in November, led by a $4 billion, two-part offering from Sprint Nextel, the third-largest US mobile network operator.   The Kansas company ...

CORPORATE FINANCING NEWS: GLOBAL EQUITY/DRS   By Gordon Platt   New China Life Insurance raised $1.9 billion in an initial public offering in Hong Kong and Shanghai in December, but it was forced to price the issue at the bottom of ...

CORPORATE FINANCING NEWS: MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS   By Gordon Platt   Anglo American, one of the world’s largest mining companies, gained a long-coveted majority stake in diamond mining company De Beers, in one of two M&A deals that the British firm ...

NEWSMAKERS: UNITED STATES   By Paula Green   Will Wall Street miss US Congressman Barney Frank, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) and architect of the 2010 legislation aiming to avert another global financial disaster?   Frank ...

NEWSMAKERS: INDIA   By Aaron Chaze   After two decades leading India’s largest and most respected conglomerate, Ratan Tata will step down in December 2012 as chairman of Tata Sons—the holding company that runs the $83 billion Tata group of companies, with ...

NEWSMAKERS: SPAIN   By Valentina Pasquali   Like Greece and Italy, Spain too has a new government, tasked with bringing the country back from the brink.   Rajoy heads new government Unlike Greece’s Lucas Papademos and Italy’s Mario Monti, Spain’s prime ...

NEWSMAKERS: NIGERIA   By Anita Hawser   Nigerian central bank governor Lamido Sanusi believes the likelihood of European banks going into a major crisis is quite high, and is concerned over the impact on Nigerian oil exports.   Sanusi looks to Asia ...

SPONSORED ROUNDTABLE: TECHNOLOGY GAME CHANGERS   Moderated by Denise Bedell   Liquidity and risk management, treasury efficiency, eBAM, SWIFT for corporates, and mobile treasury apps were center stage during Global Finance ’s TCM roundtable in New York in November.   From ...