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— Hassaim Arabi, Shuaa Asset Managememt

Awash with liquidity, GCC members are investing in the wider Middle East and North Africa region and even looking towards India and the far East. Peter Guest reports.

From the 51st floor of the Emirates Hotel Tower in Dubai, guests can see how close they are to the desert. Directly below is a single line of skyscrapers. In their shadow is a rough spread of low-rise, sand-coloured houses, and behind that, nothing.

— Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, Egypt’s Minister of Investment

Nat Mankelow talks to Egyptian Minster of Investment, Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, about aims to promote and establish the country as a location for financial services.

Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, Egypt’s Minister of Investment, has much to occupy his working day. There is a serious bread shortage in the country, a situation caused by high wheat prices worldwide and persisting despite a government subsidy.

— Philippe Carrel, Reuters

When Société Générale’s Jérôme Kerviel posted the largest ever single trading loss this February there were striking similarities with other rogue trading scandals from the past. Peter Guest asks whether or not the industry has learnt its lesson.

January 21 was generally a bad day to be trading. Quickly dubbed ‘Black Monday’, it saw the FTSE 100 record its largest ever fall. The US markets were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but Asian and European markets tumbled. It was, therefore, not a good time to start unwinding directional positions in European stock indices totalling close to €50bn.

— Simon Ruddick, Albourne Partners

The bear market in credit may be spreading to equities at last. Hedge funds are held to be one of the few attractive options left for the put-upon investor – but is this still true after years of rising correlations and ‘disguised beta’? Martin Steward investigates.

Shortly before Christmas, Aoiffin Devitt, managing director of alternative investments advisory firm Clontarf Capital, offered a bottle of champagne for the best definition of alpha. The lucky winner? “Alpha is what’s left over when your luck has run out.”

Averting and adapting to potentially catastrophic climate change could be the defining theme of this century. Peter Guest investigates capital markets solutions.