Global Finance

Cyprus

For the Cyprus government, attracting and fostering foreign investment is amongst the prime objectives of its development policy. As such, a highly favorable environment for all forms of inward and transitional business activity and foreign investment has been created to ensure an infrastructure which has the maximum potential for success and growth. Thousands of international companies, including US multinationals in petroleum, insurance, foodstuffs, finance and telecommunication have establ...

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Seeing Beyond the Numbers

Emerging Markets

Dubai Exchange to Boost Local Trading

In an effort to stimulate more trading by local investors, the Dubai International Financial Exchange (DIFX) is now allowing companies to list, trade and clear in UAE dirhams, as well as dollars. The exchange has also added Sunday trading. In addition, the DIFX has created a derivatives platform for single-stock futures and index futures, with options trading planned at a later date. The current shift in capital flows gives Dubai and the UAE an opportunity to strengthen its position as a glob...

Crisis Starts to Bite Harder

Fitch Ratings downgraded its outlook on South Africa's BBB+ credit rating to negative from stable, citing concerns over the country's ability to finance its current account deficit and the possibility that a falling rand will fuel inflation. The global financial crisis is having an impact on many African economies, as commodities prices decline and the amount of remittances sent home by African workers abroad begins to shrink. In response, the African Development Bank lowered its forecast for...

China Braced for Global Slowdown

China will spend 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) over the next two years on infrastructure and social welfare projects, the country's State Council announced on November 9. Policymakers hope that the spending spree will strengthen the domestic economy and reduce the economic drag from the financial crisis in the US and other markets. While its leaders worked to compensate for a global slowdown, China's economy proved remarkably resilient: Its trade surplus grew to a record high in October desp...

Employment Market Shrugs Off Global Downturn

India's job market appears to have escaped unscathed in the global wave of retrenchment. There were concerns that the outsourcing industry would be hit by the global recessions but that does not seem to be the case. British Telecom, which announced 10,000 job cuts in early November, has said no jobs would be cut from its 20,000-strong Indian workforce. The biggest show of strength, however, is coming from Indian companies. Other global corporations have announced plans to add to their headcou...

Banks Continue Consolidation

Brazil's banks continued their consolidation trend, with the most recent deal in November creating Latin America's largest financial group. Itau, Brazil's second-largest non-state-owned bank, announced its acquisition of Unibanco, the country's third-largest, in a stock transaction valued at some $12.5 billion. UK-based Standard Chartered agreed to acquire Lehman Brothers' Brazilian assets, valued at around $4.3 million, for an undisclosed sum. The deal will be completed through Standard Char...

Medvedev's Troubles Set Stage for Putin's Return

The Russian government is struggling to contain a rapidly unfolding and sharply accelerating economic crisis. With the country's economy in tatters, its leaders decided to focus on security instead. In his first state of the union address, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that in response to Washington's planned missile defense system, Russia would move short-range missiles into Kaliningrad. On another front, Medvedev suggested that starting in 2012 the term of office of the president o...

Imf and Fed Fail to Stem Asset Flight

Colombian Cement Maker Starts Level I Adr Program

Tiger Brands Pounces in Kenya

Cover Story

Capitalizing On the Crisis

Having avoided the headlines for years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found itself squarely in the spotlight in October as it made a series of emergency loans to Hungary, Iceland and Ukraine. While the IMF loans helped prevent the collapse of these countries' economies, the fund's reemergence as a global force sent a chill down the spines of some who remember the Asian and Latin American crises of the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to flexibility on conditionality, there are other signs...

Corporate Financing News: Foreign Exchange

Dollar to Resume Rally As Risk Aversion Rises

The dollar will resume its remarkable comeback as slumping economies around the world trigger rising credit defaults and usher in a new flight to safety, currency analysts say. The greenback retreated in early November, however, as frozen credit markets began to thaw and equity markets bounced back. The sharp rally in the dollar since July has been particularly surprising in the context of the global credit crisis, says Binky Chadha, strategist at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York. The dec...

Corporate Financing News: Global Equity/Drs

New Indexes Track London-Listed Gdrs

The Bank of New York Mellon introduced 31 new global depositary receipt (GDR) indexes, including a master index of all GDRs traded on the London Stock Exchange. The bank also unveiled a broader composite index, known as the DR Index, which combines the new GDR Index with the 10-year-old Bank of New York Mellon ADR Index, comprising American depositary receipts (ADR) traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The ADR index has 56 subindexes. Prior to the SEC...

Corporate Financing News: Corporate Debt

Credit Default Swaps Market Outstandings Shrink As Dealers Tear Up Offsetting Agreements

Participants in the over-the-counter credit default swaps (CDS) market have sharply reduced the notional amount of CDS contracts outstanding this year through a series of portfolio compression cycles, also known as tear-ups. The decrease in notional outstanding CDS amounts in 2008 reflects a range of activities, including compression exercises run by TriOptima, Creditex and Markit, says the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. Meanwhile, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corpora...

Awards Ceremony

Tcm and Supply Chain

Newsmakers

Aso Bursts Onto World Stage As Recession Hits Home

With the US and Europe at odds over proposed new regulatory measures for financial markets, Japanese prime minister Taro Aso stole the spotlight with his announcement of a plan for Japan to lend up to $100 billion to the International Monetary Fund to help support emerging market countries most affected by the global economic slowdown. Aso also proposed to use Japan's considerable experience In dealing with the aftermath of asset bubbles to help lead the world out of its economic and financia...

Oligarchs Face a Bleak Future

The global financial crisis is sucking Russia's oligarchs into its vortex. Information provider Bloomberg recently estimated that the combined wealth of the 23 richest Russians had plummeted 62% over the six-month period ended in October, destroying some $230 billion in wealth. In the same way that he personified the take-no-prisoners approach of the unique Russian brand of capitalism, Oleg Deripaska, the head of automobiles-to-aluminum empire Basic Element, has turned into a poster child of ...

Regulators Focus On Liquidity Risk

Regulators across the world may soon be pooling information in an attempt to police global banks' liquidity risk. Bob McDowall, research director, Europe, for analyst firm TowerGroup, believes national regulators will need to build systems in order to exchange information so that they can exercise regulatory oversight of banks' liquidity risk management. In essence, banks will need to move to a real-time, more predictive approach to risk management, which requires much more capturing of infor...

Firms Hoard Cash As Crisis Deepens

As the credit crunch continues to wreak havoc in the corporate and financial worlds and shows clear signs of seeping into the real economy, companies are hoarding cash and paying bills more slowly, according to the results of a survey conducted by Global Finance. Companies' attitudes toward taking steps to build liquidity without relying on bank borrowing also demonstrated regional differences, with 38% of US-based companies indicating that they were "aggressively" building liquidity, compare...

Milestones

Rating Slides As Default Looms

Standard & Poor's (S&P) lowered Argentina's sovereign rating on October 31 to B- from B, putting it six notches below investment grade. This marks S&P's second Argentina downgrade since August. The move comes as Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner makes overtures to holdouts from the government's 2005 debt workout, which followed its historic $100 billion default in 2001. Markets had been spooked even before the downgrade, when the Kirchner administration unveiled a...

Security Breach Raises Questions at Imf

A security sweep of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) ultra-sensitive computer network in early November revealed malicious spyware that was spreading through the agency. Curiously, the spyware was discovered just days after the World Bank had moved more than 100 of its employees into an IMF building in Washington, DC. The cyber problems raise questions over whether the technological infrastructure of both agencies can handle any extra stress in a world where hacking syndicates are grow...

G-20 Seeks Coordinated Global Regulation

After the recent meeting of the Group of 20 (G-20) countries in Washington, DC, in mid-November, the likelihood of the creation of a new, more international regulatory system for the financial world increased sharply. The most vocal of the G-20 leaders was Britain's premier, Gordon Brown, a long-time advocate of a new global architecture for the financial system whose failings are claimed to have been a root cause of the current crisis. G-20 countries agreed it was necessary to overhaul regul...

Four-Year Fight Ends in Cafta Ratification

Four years after it was first signed, Costa Rican lawmakers in November finally ratified CAFTA, the free trade agreement between Central America, the Dominican Republic and the US. The main sticking points involved CAFTA's implementing legislation, which included charges that intellectual property guidelines were too stringent in requiring prison sentences for violators. The administration of president Oscar Arias, a Nobel laureate and strong CAFTA supporter, entered into negotiations with la...

Citi

Managing Market Turbulence in China: A Partnership Approach

The Bank Of New York Mellon

Fx Update

Once the global financial crisis had grown to a head at the start of the summer, trading in the foreign exchange markets was swiftly characterized by a wholesale retreat in trends ingrained in the marketplace in recent years. You feel fairly sure that, notwithstanding continued volatility, you may be in for some particularly sharp price movements before year-end. You strongly suspect there are two broad elements within the FX market. There are those who have earned profit and hence wish to ex...

First Bank Of Nigeria Plc

Nigeria's Market Leader Focuses On Service and Strategic Vision

Sg Index

Sg Index Provides Many Ways to Access Emerging Markets

Icbc

Strength in a Time of Adversity

Emerging Markets Focus

Victims and Saviors?

The global financial crisis was clearly stamped "Made in USA," but the outlook for growth in emerging economies is being rapidly scaled back, proving that globalization is for real. What started as a US housing market problem has morphed into a worldwide economic slowdown and could be turning into something worse. In Asia, the 1997-1998 financial crisis spawned needed economic reforms, leaving many economies in a stronger condition than previously. In the Middle East, major oil exporters are ...