Global Finance

CORPORATE FINANCING FOCUSAs risk appetite returns to the global markets, the dollar could lose what little support it has gained from its role as a safe-haven currency during the recent period of turbulence, analysts say.The dollar will remain supported...

Buffeted by the shock waves from the US subprime mortgage crisis. Brazil has to steer a steady course if it is to keep its economic development on track.When President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a proclaimed leftist, first took power in 2003, many predicted...

China is likely to have the year's biggest initial public offering for the second year in a row, although there remains a chance that Russia will beat it out. As Global Finance went to press, China Construction Bank planned to begin trading its shares...

Legislation aimed at cracking down on funding for terrorists is having some damaging side effects for banks and businesses.Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, US president George Bush asked the world to "stop payment" on what he termed the "lifeblood...

The global credit crunch appears to be having a major impact on the size and financing of takeovers, where cash deals for much smaller targets are increasingly the rule.The biggest announced M&A transaction worldwide in August was a bid by Germany-based...

Many Asian countries desperately need to upgrade their infrastructure while cash-rich private equity funds are scouring the region for long-term investments. Is this a match made in heaven?Over the past few years private equity (PE) funds have raised...

LATIN AMERICAWhen the meltdown in US subprime mortgages triggered forecasts of a possible US recession, unleashing global credit and money market volatility, Latin America proved to be relatively insulated from the debacle. Though initially shaken, the...

JAMAICANewly sworn-in Jamaican prime minister Brace Golding is seeking ways to kick-start the island's sluggish economy and tackle mounting social pressures over escalating unemployment and crime rates (his own forecasts predict 1,300 murders this year...

RUSSIAIn a long-overdue cabinet shuffle, Russian prime minister Mikhail Fradkov submitted his resignation on September 12. Hours later president Vladimir Putin nominated the relatively unknown head of the federal financial monitoring service, Victor...

As Nordic banks look further outside their home markets for growth, the rewards-and also the risksare increasing.Over the past few years, banks in the Nordic region have benefited from highly favorable economic conditions across the region. With above-eurozone...

EUROPEBusinesses and public sector organizations operating in Europe have until 2010 to abandon existing national payment instruments and adopt new pan-European credit transfer and direct debits. At least that is the central tenet of the single euro...

EUROPEThe subprime mortgage crisis in the US has forced the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) to speak out about the new sources of risk being created by the market's appetite for increasingly complex financial instruments. At the European...

At a time when the world economic outlook is more uncertain than it has been in years, the banking industry finds itself at the vortex of a financial market storm that originated in subprime mortgages in the United States and has spread to global money,...