Given that Europe’s exchanges are now run for profit – an ethos that may be compounded by prospective mergers with expansionist US exchanges – users complain that their needs have become secondary and are threatening to set up their own pan-continental multilateral trading facilities. Dan Barnes explains.
When it comes to pessimistic forecasts, Exclusive Analysis is in a league of its own, expecting increasing expropriation risks to foreign investors in Russia, more attempted attacks by terrorists in the UK and an increased risk to energy infrastructure in the Gulf from Sunni extremists.
Dealmakers are natural optimists, whereas analysts are usually pessimists. Dealmakers enjoy taking risks and believe they will make money against the odds; analysts spend so much time crunching numbers and looking at 100 different scenarios that by the time they have finished the entire outlook seems bleak. Even so, it is hard to see how all the analysts’ dire predictions for 2007 can be avoided.
For the first International Finance Facility for Immunisation debt issue to succeed, lead managers Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank had to devise a way of frontloading development finance at an affordable cost. Edward Russell-Walling reports on a scheme designed to ensure reliable funding for vaccine projects.