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Cover Story

Cover Story : Driving Efficiency

Centralizing treasury and finance functions is an ever more popular way for companies to reduce costs, improve investment strategies and control risks. With increasing trends toward globalization, automation and standardization, more and more companies are centralizing their treasury and finance ...

Cover Story : Fast Forward

In the world of cash forecasting, change is accelerating as more and more companies look to improve forecasting in order to better manage liquidity. When Global Finance launched 20 years ago, cash forecasting was in its infancy. There was little ...

Features

Features : At A Crossroads

Offering an increasingly transparent and business-friendly environment, Cyprus is attracting ever more investment from global corporations. Nearly 30 years ago, Kardex, a Swiss-based corporation that has its roots as a US typewriter company, saw the benefits of placing an operating ...

Features : Breaking Out

Brazilian companies, long used to concentrating on their country’s local market, are now increasingly going global. Just as the 1990s marked record foreign investment in Brazil thanks to a wave of privatizations, this decade is seeing a wave of Brazilian ...

Features : Paving The Way For E-Invoices

Long predicted to be the next killer app for treasurers, e-invoicing has been slow to take off. That is all beginning to change now. The growth of corporate electronic invoice presentment and payment (EIPP) has not been nearly as explosive ...

Features : The Quiet Revolution

Portugal’s government is risking unpopularity in an attempt to inject renewed dynamism into the country’s economy. José Sócrates, the prime minister of Portugal, recently described his country as “the reform capital of Europe” and referred to his government’s policies as ...

Features : The Tortilla Factor

Mexico’s newly installed president faces a tough first year in office as he struggles to reconcile his promises with fiscal reality. Corn tortillas are a basic staple in Mexicans’ diet. But for the administration of the country’s new president, Felipe ...

Emerging Markets

Newsmakers : Sarin Connects With Indian Phone Deal

UNITED KINGDOM / INDIA Vodafone head, Arun Sarin: Global ambitions Arun Sarin, chief executive of UK-based mobile phone service provider Vodafone, is living proof that it pays to try again. Rebuffed in his attempt to win control of AT&T; Wireless ...

Corporate Finance : Carry-trade Jitters Returning To Market

FOREIGN EXCHANGE What happens when you wind a coil spring very tight and suddenly let it release? That is a question that analysts and participants in the foreign exchange carry trades are asking. They are hoping that it is possible ...

Emerging Markets : Eurex To Introduce Russian Index Future

DR NEWS Eurex, the derivatives exchange owned by Deutsche Börse and SWX Swiss Exchange, will introduce a future on April 23 on an index created by the Vienna Stock Exchange that contains the 15 largest Russian depositary receipts traded on ...

Emerging Markets : Investors Shy Away From IPOs

RUSSIA Putin:Big businesses should be diversifying Prosecutors brought fresh charges against former Yukos oil company head Mikhail Khodorkovsky and an associate, which could mean that they will face another 15 years behind bars. Khodorkovsky would otherwise have been eligible for ...

Emerging Markets : ITC Builds Hotels

COMPANY TO WATCH: ITC/INDIA Kolkata-based ITC, or India Tobacco, is building luxury hotels as fast as it can to take advantage of a tourism boom and to diversify its operations. Non-cigarette businesses now account for more than half of the ...

Emerging Markets : Lula Unveils Growth Plan

BRAZIL Brazils central bank is putting the brakes on interest rate cuts Having vowed to make economic growth the focus of his second term, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva unveiled a long-awaited plan to boost the nation’s economy. ...

Emerging Markets : Private Capital Flows Could Shrink

NEWS Total net private capital flows to emerging markets are forecast to decline to about $470 billion this year from $502 billion in 2006, in line with slowing world economic growth, according to the Washington, DC-based Institute of International Finance ...

Emerging Markets : Rating Upgrade Boosts The Rise Of India Inc.

INDIA India Inc. will benefit from rating upgrade In a move that will drive substantial foreign investment in India, Standard & Poor’s became the third major ratings agency to raise India’s sovereign rating to investment grade. The rating now stands ...

Emerging Markets : Restraints Fail To Cool Sizzling Economy

CHINA Chinese president Hu Jintao China’s economy continued to sizzle in 2006 despite government efforts to slow the country’s growth to a more moderate pace. GDP grew more quickly in 2006 than it has in a decade, leaping 10.7% to ...

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Milestones

Milestones : Hsbc Mortgage Debacle May Herald Market Meltdown

UNITED STATES When HSBC announced that it will take a higher-than-expected charge on bad debts for 2006 as a result of the growing bankruptcy rates in the US sub-prime mortgage market, it sent a shockwave through the market. The $10.5 ...

Milestones : Regulators Close In On Private Equity

UNITED STATES / EUROPE Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group Plagued by competition and antitrust investigations on both sides of the Atlantic but still the darling of the bond markets, private equity firms are facing an uncertain future. In ...

Corporate Finance

Corporate Finance : Carry-trade Jitters Returning To Market

FOREIGN EXCHANGE What happens when you wind a coil spring very tight and suddenly let it release? That is a question that analysts and participants in the foreign exchange carry trades are asking. They are hoping that it is possible ...

Corporate Finance : Centerview Partners Takes Spotlight

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Centerview Partners, an advisory boutique formed last July by three prominent Wall Street investment bankers, was the number-two M&A; adviser in the Americas in January, according to Thomson Financial. Stephen Crawford, formerly co-president of Morgan Stanley, joined ...

Corporate Finance : Treasurers Turn To Trading Derivatives

GLOBAL EQUITY/DRS The days when large corporations refused to deal in what were seen as “dodgy” derivatives are long gone. Now, equity swaps, bespoke equity options and even volatility swaps are all used to hedge corporate activity. However, the wariness ...

Newsmakers

Newsmakers : Belarus Outlines Privatization Plans

BELARUS Nanda: Controlling spread of AIDS makes good business sense As relations continue to sour between Belarus and Russia, Belarus’s government has revealed that it wants to reduce its economic dependency on its closest neighbor. In a move that analysts ...

Newsmakers : Sarin Connects With Indian Phone Deal

UNITED KINGDOM / INDIA Vodafone head, Arun Sarin: Global ambitions Arun Sarin, chief executive of UK-based mobile phone service provider Vodafone, is living proof that it pays to try again. Rebuffed in his attempt to win control of AT&T; Wireless ...