Nigel Dudley reports on the favourable fortunes of those Swedish banks that have set up shop beyond their borders, venturing into Russia and even China.

Lehman Brothers’ homework enabled German chemicals giant BASF to walk off with US catalyst maker Engelhard for a mere 5% above its initial unsolicited offer. Edward Russell-Walling reports.

Although there is talk of Rusal floating, its finance chief Vladislav Soloviev tells Edward Russell-Walling the aluminium giant does not need to tap the capital markets just yet.

London Metal Exchange chairman Donald Brydon tells Karina Robinson that change at the institution is unavoidable but a sell off is not on the books.

OTP Bank (aka the National Savings and Commercial Bank), Hungary’s leading bank and the only locally owned central European bank with a regional strategy, continues to look eastwards for expansion with a flurry of takeover activity.

Orthodox ‘adjustment’ policies risk destroying the gains made since the 2001 crisis, namely high growth and investment rates as well as reasonably low inflation and unemployment, says Roberto Lavagna.

With its neighbours in various states of strife, safeguarding Turkey’s obvious progress should be an EU priority.

For Barclays to succeed in the new South Africa, it must strengthen newly acquired Absa's efficiency and then both must learn how to tap the country’s burgeoning black middle class. Meanwhile, their efforts are shaking up a heavily concentrated banking sector. 

The New Forests Company (NFC) is using CDM to help finance its reforestation of an area in western Uganda in its Namwara project.

The most conspicuous change to the list of sub-Saharan African banks in the Top 1000 is the proliferation of Nigerian institutions. This reflects the impact of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s decree that banks there meet a new minimum capital requirement of N25bn ($192m), up from just N2bn.