July/August 2005

Just months after analysts began suggesting it could topple the dollar as the world’s favorite currency, the euro has been shaken to the core. Its troubles have brought into focus the problems at the heart of the European Union. For ...

Long one of Asia’s more stable emerging markets, Malaysia is ready for the next stage in its development. Malaysia has much to be thankful for. Benign colonialism left the country with good education systems and sound infrastructure. A strong and ...

China Oil giant CNOOC joined the rush to snap up foreign assets Chinese companies continued to demonstrate their economic prowess and enthusiasm for expansion abroad with several headline-grabbing bids in June. US-based oil and gas producer Unocal announced on June ...

Shifting to Overdrive South Korea’s Hyundai Motor is stepping up its globalization campaign. In late June it revealed joint-venture plans with China’s Guangzhou Motor Group to produce trucks and buses in China. The two partners will build a plant in ...

NEWS S.V. Prasad Mumbai-based Birla Mutual Fund is launching the Birla India GenNext Fund, which will invest in equities of companies that are expected to gain from the free-spending habits of India’s young urban professionals, or Yuppies. The company says ...

Brazil Antonio Palocci The Brazilian central bank’s nearly year-long monetary policy tightening drive is finally bearing fruit. The monetary policy committee (Copom) hiked the benchmark Selic interest rate by 375 basis points since last September in a move to curb ...

Russia Chubais: Takes the blame The trial of former Yukos Oil Company head Mikhail Khodorkovsky finally ended, as the former oligarch was sentenced to nine years in a prison camp on charges of fraud and tax evasion. A few days ...

India Battling the monsoons in India India’s state governments have begun to push hard for foreign investments. Among them is the reclusive state of Kerala, which has suffered from the fact that investors have been wary of its elected communist ...

DR News Taiwan-based technology companies, which accounted for the vast majority of capital raised via global depositary receipts in 2003, are returning to the market. In one of the biggest issues of the year to date, Chi Mei Optoelectronics, or ...

Asia Japan’s Hiroshi Watanabe Call it the non-petro currency. The Japanese yen fell to an 8.5-month low against the dollar in late June, as oil prices rose above $60 a barrel. Other Asian currencies, such as the South Korean won ...

United States Citigroup’s Charles Prince The time was, not so many years ago, when the stock market was soaring, that every investment bank had to own a money manager in order to be a true financial supermarket. Apparently, times are ...

United Kingdom Bono with Tony Blair First it was Bono, singer of the rock band U2, and other musicians and activists who pushed political and economic leaders of the industrial nations to forgive the debt of the world’s poorest nations. ...

Global Simon Collins To the casual observer it might look as though M&A; activity globally during the first half of 2005 was less than inspiring. Activity did increase when compared with the same period last year, but growth was modest. ...

Global Equity/DRs China’s biggest coal producer and the country’s fifth-largest lender made initial public offerings in June that set the stage for a flood of Chinese IPOs this year, mainly by state-owned companies. China Shenhua Energy, which operates 21 mines ...

Mergers & Acquisitions Erich Hampel, CEO of Bank Austria Creditanstalt, writing in the bank’s 2004 annual report, said, “In Central and Eastern Europe, our goal is to become market leader.” Hampel and Bank Austria are on the verge of realizing ...

Corporate Financing Focus The clear “no” votes in the Netherlands and France on the EU Constitution led some market participants to remark that the euro has become a currency without a country. Italian labor minister Roberto Maroni even suggested that ...

Corporate Debt Cash-rich US companies may use billions of dollars of repatriated foreign earnings to pay down their debt, potentially driving spreads tighter as the supply of corporate bonds diminishes, analysts say. Under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, ...

Latin America Iglesias: Stepping down Enrique V. Iglesias, president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), has decided to cut short his current five-year term in order to hand over control to "new hands." Iglesias, 74, has been at the multilateral ...

Middle East/United States NYMEX’s Steinhause The Middle East has taken formative steps toward the establishment of the region’s first energy futures exchange with the announcement of a joint venture between Dubai Holding and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) estimated ...

United States Cox: Business-friendly Judging by his past actions, Christopher Cox, the pro-business California Republican nominated by President Bush to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, is likely to steer the agency away from the activist path followed by former ...

United States Snow: Watching CNOOC When it comes to being in the China “hot seat,” US treasury secretary John Snow is an old hand. He has been pressuring China for the past few years to revalue its currency, while trying ...