This white paper looks at recent events affecting Australia’s banking sector. These include the legal risks associated with debt issuance programmes should a European Union member exit the Union, plus reforms to the Privacy Act 1988 in relation to banking and swap developments. VIEW SUMMARY

Margin lending has given individuals and corporate borrowers the opportunity to finance investments with the use of asset backed portfolios. This white paper analyses the structure of margin lending and its various risks. VIEW SUMMARY

The new European Regulation on short selling and certain aspects of credit default swaps is intended to create an EU common regulatory framework for dealing with short selling issues. Macfarlanes looks in detail at how the regulation will work in practice. VIEW SUMMARY

The infrastructure finance market transitioning. As the bank market for long-term finance continues to contract, market players are waiting to see how the new models develop. Under contention includes the mix of bond and bank finance, if projects are greenfield developments or debt refinancings. VIEW SUMMARY

This white paper discusses the current state of European small-cap, mid-cap and SMID-cap indexing. It looks at how tracking errors can be reduced and correlations increased using a different choice of index. VIEW SUMMARY

It is well known that the capital structure arbitrage strategy generated negative Sharpe ratios between 2005-2009. This white paper introduces four new alternative strategies that exploit the information provided by the time-varying price discovery of the equity and credit default swap markets. VIEW SUMMARY

This research was produced as part of "The Benefits of Volatility Derivatives in Equity Portfolio Management" strategic research project at EDHEC-Risk Institute, in partnership with Eurex. VIEW SUMMARY

The importance of accurately modelling and managing credit risk is continuously growing, regulatory changes and evolving risk management practices have led to banks looking a lot more closely at credit risk. This white paper provides an introduction to this challenging topic. VIEW SUMMARY

After the cut in the prime lending rate to 1.25% by the European Central Bank, and with the inflation rate in Germany at 2.4% in November 2011, real returns are clearly negative. Consequently, investors are searching for products that are less affected by capital market fluctuations, but still VIEW SUMMARY

Volatility is emerging as the norm for markets as analysts debate the interdependence of emerging markets and developed economies. Investors and risk managers who can gauge correlation between multiple asset classes correctly and unify them through hybrid products will find they are best prepared to VIEW SUMMARY