The open joint stock company Raiffeisen Bank Aval, which is 96% owned by Raiffeisen International Bank, is to receive a US$160mn subordinated loan facility with a 10-year tenor from Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich (RZB).

The Latvian government has announced that it has selected Nomura International, the global investment bank, as strategic advisor for the sale of its stake in Parex banka.

An estimated 3,000 cars have been dumped at Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports by expat workers leaving the country after losing their jobs. Many still have keys in the ignition. It is a sign of the times in credit crunch Dubai.

Western donors are putting pressure on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to renegotiate the terms of the US$9bn minerals-for-infrastructure contract signed with China last year, according to widespread reports in early February.

The worse situation in Eastern Europe, the better things seem to go for Blackstone’s European advisory team. In the last few weeks, it has won mandates advising the government of Ukraine and Latvia’s Parex banka on two of the biggest restructurings the CEE region has ever seen, and it is about to win another major restructuring mandate, rumoured to be with the government of Kazakhstan.

The pessimistic predictions of Nouriel Roubini, professor at NYU Stern Business School and founder of RGE Monitor, have been proved uncannily accurate. Here, he says that the US and UK banking sectors are mainly insolvent, and that rather than propping up ‘zombie banks’, it may soon be time to nationalise most of the sector.

The banking system in Kazakhstan has been hit hard in the first quarter of 2009. The Kazakh government has nationalised two of the top four banks, BTA Bank and Alliance Bank; part-nationalised Kazkommerzbank and Halyk Bank; and devalued the tenge by 18%, which will put further pressure on the heavily-indebted banking sector.

Dambisa Moyo, a former economist at Goldman Sachs and now independent consultant and author, says the US$1tn that the West has given to Africa in aid over the last 30 years has been wasted, and that the continent needs to move to a more capital markets approach.

Viktor Orban, the leader of the opposition party Fidesz in Hungary and a possible future prime minister, has called for a new central European alliance, to protect the interests of CEE countries within the EU. 

Speaking at the Euromoney CEE Conference in Vienna in mid-January, Orban said: “I feel that a central Europe alliance is necessary. We need an independent security policy; a means to ensure our energy security; and also an alliance to push forward transport integration in central Europe and to establish a common development policy for the region.”

The Kuwaiti Noor Financial Investment Company has announced its plans for a joint venture with Russia’s Gazprom Giovezeka of the Russian oil and gas company Gazprom.

According to a report by the National Bank of Kuwait, issued by the Ministry of Justice, property sales in Kuwait have dropped in December last year, amounting to just half the number of sales made during the same month in 2007.

Structured finance markets are stagnating in the EMEA region, according to a new report from Moody’s, although some markets, such as Russia and UAE, are still growing.