Global news and insight for corporate financial professionals
AFRICAN INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCE Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic development is still constrained by a historic dearth of infrastructure investment. Private sector investors might be able to provide the hitherto missing link. Controversial development: Dams such as the Kariba on ...
CENTRAL BANKER REPORT CARDS 2008 ANNUAL SURVEY/ CENTRAL BANKER REPORT CARDS Contributors: Antonio Guerrero, Anita Hawser and Gordon Platt History will judge whether the actions taken by central bankers during the past year to rescue financial institutions from the clutches ...
SPOTLIGHT / EMERGING MARKETS Emerging markets have been some of the best performers of recent years. Is their continued growth now under threat? Since the credit crunch began more than a year ago, it has inflicted most pain on ...
ANALYSIS / RUSSIA’S GEORGIA GAMBIT Russia’s recent assault on Georgia raises some scary prospects for European nations dependent on energy supplies from West Asia. Double act: Vladimir Putin passed the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev but still retains much ...
FOCUS / ECONOMIC NATIONALISM As if the global credit squeeze were not enough, multinationals, particularly in the commodities industries, are also facing a surge in resource nationalism. Horne: Companies are investing in riskier areas. Fueled in part by soaring ...
ECONOMIC UPDATE / CHINA As the dust settles after the Olympic games, China is facing a less certain economic future. Relentless progress: Construction work in Beijing's booming central business district. China opened the 29th Olympic games on August ...
AFRICAN INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCE Despite the increasingly sophisticated solutions deployed to prevent it, rogue trading is still a serious problem in the banking industry. Every year banks spend billions deploying sophisticated filtering and electronic “perimeter fence” technologies to try to ...
ANNUAL SURVEY / WORLD’S BEST BANKS 2008 Now more than ever, the world’s best banks deserve recognition for continuing to provide excellent products and high levels of service to their clients, despite the distractions of the global credit ...
MIDDLE EAST Dubai International Financial Center: Business is growing. The opening of Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, the largest in the Arab world, to investors from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) couldn’t have come at a better ...
NEWS The world’s emerging equity markets had a gloomy summer, falling 19.4% in the three months through August, compared with a decline of 11.55% in developed equity markets in the same period, according to an analysis by Standard & Poor’s. ...
RUSSIA Russia's actions in South Ossetia exacerbated a stock market slide. Russian markets have been in turmoil for a month after the country signaled its intent to move back up the geopolitical pecking order by marching its troops ...
BRAZIL Petrobras head José Sergio Gabrielli: Prefers debt issue to equity. The Brazilian government is grappling with the reality of new offshore oil discoveries that could produce an estimated 50 billion barrels of oil, according to private ...
INDIA Nano, no? Protests in West Bengal may derail Tata's plans to build the world's cheapest car. According to a survey by consultant KPMG, India’s companies are among the world’s most aggressive in buying companies based in ...
CHINA Slowdown: Automakers are seeing sales growth tail off in China. China’s consumer price index (CPI) grew by only 4.9% in August, its mildest pace in more than a year, and export growth slowed to 21%, according to ...
COMPANY TO WATCH: INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES/INDIA Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest IT services provider, announced a $755 million cash deal to buy UK-based Axon, which advises companies on installing business software created by SAP of Germany. If the transaction is completed, it ...
AFRICA Unemployment and homelessness have risen sharply in Zimbabwe. Following the controversial reelection of president Robert Mugabe in June, Zimbabwe has fallen into even greater economic chaos. Officials said annual inflation leapt to 11.2 million percent in ...
DR NEWS Eleven new companies, spun off from Russia’s former electricity monopoly, selected The Bank of New York Mellon as the depositary for their Regulation S and Rule 144A global depositary receipt programs. The bank is ...
COUNTRY REPORT / TURKEY Turkey’s Islamist government has narrowly avoided a constitutional crisis, but it is still treading a fine line in its quest for economic progress. When Turkey’s constitutional court dismissed a move in July to outlaw the ...
UNITED STATES Accounting by numbers: Proponents of global standards say they reduce costs. More than 100 of the largest US public companies could be using international accounting standards by the end of next year ...
UNITED STATES IMF: Many view it as responsible for causing, not reducing, poverty. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not likely to win any popularity contests anywhere in the world these days. Emerging market governments have been ...
GLOBAL All at sea: Oil prices have tumbled, but further steep falls are unlikely. Crude oil prices, which reached nearly $150 a barrel in July, fell below $100 a barrel for the first time ...
AZERBAIJAN Azerbaijan's pro-business president, Ilham Aliyev. The regulatory reform movement that has been thriving in Central and Eastern Europe in recent years is spreading eastward into Central Asia, with Azerbaijan taking the title of the world’s ...
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS Europe passed the United States in corporate dealmaking in August thanks to two large transactions, including a spin-off and a hostile bid. The total of US mergers and acquisitions for the year to date of $849 billion, ...
CORPORATE DEBT Less than $1 billion of US high-yield bonds were sold in August, one of the lowest monthly totals ever, as rising defaults and widening spreads above US treasury securities steered investors away from the market. Caribbean Restaurants, the ...
GLOBAL EQUITY/DRS Hong Kong’s stock exchange has put a framework in place to begin trading depositary receipts, which will make it the only Asian exchange to allow DR issuers to target retail investors. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKex) ...
FOREIGN EXCHANGE Get ready for some unpleasant surprises on the earnings front as a result of the dollar’s sudden recovery from a record low of $1.60 against the euro in mid-July. By early last month the euro ...
AUSTRIA Citi's Rhodes: Current crisis is the US' biggest challenge in recent history. With Bank of America buying Merrill Lynch and Lehman’s filing for bankruptcy, the global credit crunch is clearly far from over. In fact, a ...
RUSSIA Medvedev: Seemingly helpless in the face of a stock market rout. Can Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev save the country’s financial markets? In the second week of September he declared that it was “within ...
GLOBAL Vazza: Expects the default rate to continue growing. As private equity investors size up the new opportunities the credit crunch presents, companies in their sights might do well to consider a report published ...
SOUTH AFRICA Zuma: Election victory all but assured after charges are dropped. South Africa’s High Court last month dropped all corruption charges against Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress (ANC). Although the decision was based ...
