Pre-migration untagged articles

The bookmakers would probably have to agree that we backed a winner in the form of James Gorman — but our friend Bob Diamond, whom we have supported since the first nervous days of Barclays Capital, would have won both the Epsom Derby and the Grand Prix de L'Arc de Triomphe.

Market attention turned to vanilla private placements this week as public holidays in the US, Japan, China and Hong Kong choked off structured note flows.

You could have blown us over with a single wave of Lady Windermere's fan (made in China, of course), when we heard that Ossie Grübel, the Supreme Allied Commander of a resurgent Credit Suisse, was about to retire.

The Bank of Japan's rate rise on Wednesday surprised the CP market and burnt some investors, but core currency activity remained sluggish with demand limited to short tenors.

Another column, another apology. This time to Rupert Lewis, Katherine Mitchell, Clemence Delannoy and BNP Paribas's executive dining room's Michelin-starred chef, for suggesting they might serve us bird flu-ravaged turkey for our planned lunch last week. Of course, nothing of the sort was on the menu, and we dined splendidly on potted chicken livers, sea bream and chocolate and banana millefeuille. Not all on the same plate, you understand.

Russian securitisation is set to diversify considerably during 2007, if all planned deals reach the market in time.

Moody's called the top of the credit cycle this week, by predicting that speculative grade defaults would double in 2007 to more than 3%. In 2006 defaults were at their lowest for 25 years.