Racing driver and entrepreneur David Richards has been working in motorsports for 30 years, winning world rallies as a driver, running rally and Formula One teams as a manager, and setting up and managing companies as an entrepreneur. He is a pioneer in bringing motorsports to the Middle East, having set up  the first ever rally series in the Middle East when he was just 25.

Boosted by a wave of reforms and foreign investment, Turkish banks are confident that they can weather the current climate of slowing growth and rising interest rates and resume their rapid growth. Of course, there will be winners and losers. And privatisation is still to come, writes Bernard Kennedy in Ankara.

Positive reasons for investing in Turkish sovereign debt are becoming more difficult to find these days. However, yields are on the increase and years of fiscal discipline have greatly reduced the risk of default, writes Bernard Kennedy.

The securitisation market is going through the biggest crisis of its existence, a crisis that potentially even threatens its existence. Heads of state including UK prime minister Gordon Brown are blaming securitisation for the present global financial crisis and demanding that securitised assets are brought back on balance sheet. Will the market survive, and in what form? How has the crisis affected emerging markets like Russia or the Gulf, where securitisation is just beginning to take off? emeafinance gathered some of the top bankers in the market together to discuss what is happening, and where to go from here.

It caused a certain amount of surprise in financial circles when Lado Gurgenidze was made prime minister of Georgia in November 2007. Julian Evans caught up with him recently in Tallinn, Estonia.

As Egypt's government faces food riots and discontent on the street, foreign investors keep on coming.

emeafinance's 2008 awards sought to recognise the best banks, teams, and deals in the EMEA region in 2007. The winners are:

Despite the collapse of the ruling coalition, investors are hopeful the Hungarian government can stick to its fiscal austerity plans and weather the global credit crunch, writes Kester Eddy in Budapest.

Mozambique is creeping back onto investors’ radar scanners, as commercial financing trickles grow steadier, writes Kevin Godier.

For decades Libya was a ‘pariah’ state, shunned by the international community. In 2004 the doors were flung open and foreign investors were enticed in, promises were made, contracts signed, hopes raised. Four years on however it appears that inertia and backtracking by the Gaddafi administration has set in. Was it all too good to be true after all, asks Nicholas Noe.

Garanti Bank sold the first gender-linked bond from an emerging market issuer this year, and the Turkish bank is optimistic that the popularity of the socially conscious financing tool is due to grow.

Russia’s PIK Group has plans to ramp up capital markets activity in the coming years, as the firm announces a consolidation of its shareholder structure with company president Sergei Gordeev buying out two minority holders.