The IMF had its busiest month ever in November, lending a record US$41bn. But who will bail it out if it runs out of cash?

In January 2008, the IMF’s managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, sent out a confidential document to the fund’s 2,400 full-time staff, telling them to get ready for the axe.
The memo said the staff should prepare for the “trauma” of sizeable downsizing, with around a sixth of the staff to be fired, and the staff budget of the fund to be reduced by US$100mn. “This is not a good time for staff”, the memo read. “Their expectation of a full career at the fund in exchange for their unflinching dedication and loyalty is in question.”
 

Hedge funds had their worst year ever in 2008, and the market could halve in size by the end of Q1 2009. But some funds will emerge stronger from the carnage writes Donald Twain.

Stock exchanges all over the world are facing system breakdowns due to intense volatility and record volumes of trading. Will any of them emerge from the crisis in a competitive position? Liz Salecka reports.

Financing for Africa’s power sector has chiefly been characterised by delays, but transactions banked over the past year have heightened hopes for a growing deal flow, writes Kevin Godier.

While many financial institutions are turning to the state for support in difficult times, Actis, the privatised private equity company, is less and less reliant on state money, and is raising record amounts of private capital. Julian Evans meets its senior partner, Paul Fletcher. 

Belarus’ Soviet-style government is struggling to cope with the credit crunch, and is trying to make friends with the west, including seeking a US$2bn emergency loan from the IMF. But negotiations with the fund are not proving easy.

The CEE real estate market is being pummeled by the global financial crisis, but the outlook is not entirely gloomy, as Geoffrey Smith discovers.

It’s a sure sign that things are bad when Russian businesses, generally more used to browbeating journalists, start begging them for help.
 

The Middle East has been less severely affected by the global financial crisis because of many governments’ enormous reserves of petro-dollars. But banking systems have still been hit. Some banks have coped better than others.

For most of 2008, bankers in the Middle East were looking on the troubles of their western peers with a mixture of wonder and schadenfreude. The credit crunch still seemed a mainly western affair, that could actually strengthen the relative position of Middle East banks and lead to their international expansion.

HSBC’s new head of international banking, Tony Mahoney, tells emeafinance’s editor Julian Evans the bank is ready for a “substantial move” into Central & Eastern Europe (CEE).

At the end of September, Seychelles announced it was defaulting on its US$800mn of external debt, in the first sovereign default for two years. Experts agree that more defaults are coming in EMEA sovereign and corporate debt, and some funds are poised to take advantage of distressed debt situations.

Having been caught in a blizzard of media and regulatory attention in the first half of 2008, sovereign wealth funds are taking steps to try and improve their public image, including agreeing to a voluntary code of conduct in September, reports Julian Evans.