Latvia is the newest victim of the credit crunch. This is not official. No formal application has been made for an IMF bail-out package, nor has it made the front pages of any major newspaper of record on the continent. That said, with the economy contracting by 4.2% in the third quarter (down from 10.1% [Read more...]

This Halloween has proven particularly ghoulish for Serbian borrowers. On October 31, the National Bank of Serbia became the second European central bank in as many weeks to hike rates sharply, raising its policy rate by 200bps to bring it to 17.75%. This followed the National Bank of Hungary’s October 22 decision to hike its [Read more...]

Amid the continuation of the carnage on global financial market benchmarks in October, it has come to little surprise that emerging market currencies have universally suffered as investors shift asset allocations to perceived safe havens in the US and eurozone. Well, almost universally. One currency in the emerging Europe realm has failed to depreciate against [Read more...]