Europe

Yesterday, Moody’s cut the outlook for the sovereign debt of Portugal and put Greece on negative watch for a downgrade, signaling growing concern over spiraling debts. Just as with Spain and Ireland which I discussed yesterday, Portugal and…

I used to be a European High Yield guy. I was there when the market first took off in the late 1990s on the back of telecom plays like NTL or Telewest. I was also there when the Russian devaluation and default shut down the market. And I…

Marshall Auerback here.  I want to add a few thoughts on the situation in Latvia which Ed has highlighted on several occasions. His allusion to Argentina to describe the situation in the Baltics last July was on the money. I have a solution…

The following is my translation of a much-discussed article that appeared in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet at the weekend.  This information was being withheld from the public and leaked at an inopportune moment. Note that the…

Today, Moody’s warned that Iceland, Latvia and Hungary were stabilizing but that their economies remained fragile. The problem is high debt levels, which is restraining consumer spending. Recovery in the Eurozone has been the main aid to…

Elga Bartsch writes that Morgan Stanley looks at the recent data coming out of Eurloand as distinctly bullish. As a result, they are revising up their GDP estimates. A number of countries, notably the euro area's two largest economies -…

Both Latvia’s and Estonia’s debt ratings were downgraded by Standard and Poors.  Estonia was cut from A to A-, while Latvia was cut to BB+ to BB - its considered high yield securities aka junk bonds. This should come as no surprise as…

From the FT. Iceland’s bid to join the European Union received a boost on Monday when the 27-nation bloc’s foreign ministers agreed without delay to ask the European Commission for its opinion. The swift decision means that Iceland,…

Earnings season is upon us and the Swedish banks have begun reporting earnings. Their results have seen huge writedowns that demonstrate large and continued exposure to souring loans in the Baltics. Handelsbanken and Nordea reported…

Back in April, I mentioned a story about BTA, a bank in Kazakhstan that had been nationalized by the state in February.  The interesting bit about the story was that interested parties from abroad (including Morgan Stanley) had…