To see the digital version of this report, please <a onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onkeypress="window.open(this.href);return false;" href="http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?EID=9b92dd52-f226-43ee-9c19-9cc8d1e9df8c">click here</a>. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. To paraphrase Woody Allen, if the IMF didn’t exist, perhaps it would be necessary to i

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. A boom in Russia’s commercial and consumer credit market in recent years on the back of strong oil and gas revenues and growing consumer demand has propelled economic growth in the country and inspired heavy inflows of foreign capital. What a difference half a decade makes. Before September 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Islamic finance was once the big new thing. Prior to the financial crisis, Western bankers were schooled in the complexities of sukuk deals, Takaful (insurance), and the perils of paying interest. Publications devoted entire sections to Sharia law and deal activity. From Abu Dhabi to the traditional home of Islamic finance, Kuala Lump

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Fixed income in emerging markets has expanded rapidly over the past few years. It reached US$14trn in 2012, up from US$12.7trn in 2011, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. To put this into perspective that makes emerging market debt larger than the tradable US Treasury market which was at US$10.9trn at the end of last year. Bu

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. For nearly five years after Lehman collapsed, emerging markets were irresistible, offering growth, yield and, in the main, surprisingly little risk. Sovereigns and investment-grade corporates from Brazil to Russia to Malaysia issued debt by the truckload; risky African and Latin American frontier markets joined in on the act. Emerging

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Economists have spent the year lining up to write the obituary of global growth. Fears of rising interest rates in the US, a eurozone still fretting over its problem child, Greece, and a China with its foot off the accelerator, have all conspired against what little optimism there was. In a recent note about the impact of the end of q

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. That rating agencies derive their fees from the entities they rate has long been a source of considerable controversy, inviting suspicion about the pressure they are under to provide favourable ratings. And while agencies are quick to dismiss this pressure, it looks particularly problematic in their dealings with governments, given th

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. There has been much hand-wringing about the IMF’s initial intervention in the eurozone crisis in June 2010, when the then managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn approved a €30bn loan to Greece, the largest in the Fund’s history. The sanctioning of such an outlay – becoming a junior partner in a wider €110bn bailout mainly funded by

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. These days, multilaterals like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or Brazil’s giant mono-national institution, BNDES, seem omnipresent, striking deals in markets far from their traditional homes. Their minions scour the world for worthy or timely deals; governments lavish billions on them; their officials are feted

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. When the International Finance Corporation proposed earlier this year investing US$232m in German discount supermarket Lidl, it revealed just how broadly it interprets its mandate to fight poverty by creating wealth. The move gave ammunition to critics of the IFC – and confirmed what is shaping up to be the hottest topic of debate in

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. If misery does indeed love company, then the International Monetary Fund is a firm that revels in misery. In the years leading up to the financial crisis the veteran institution, set up in the dog days of World War Two, had become an irrelevancy. At the height of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the Fund was issuing four

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Reform momentum on the back of President Enrique Pena Nieto’s election victory last year has renewed hopes that the region’s second-largest economy is finally set to outperform. Despite broader concerns about how the withdrawal of the Fed’s asset-buying programme might impact on emerging markets, an upgrade may soon be on the cards as

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. In light of how much the Turkish economy has advanced since 2002 – when the economy suffered a debilitating banking crisis – what is the likely long-term impact on inward foreign capital flows on which the republic so heavily relies? The volatility in Turkey’s capital markets began with anti-government protests at the end of May and,