This report reaches you at a time when Emerging Europe and Turkey could be stuck on the tarmac. The political situation means Ukraine is grounded and Russia may yet have to consider an emergency landing, yet the rest of the CEE region appears to be about to take off. Placing regional politics to one side, the capital markets have begun the ascent as the clouds part to reveal an increasingly bright economic outlook. The technical imbalance between supply and demand is giving issuers huge pricing

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. The CEE high-yield market is gaining momentum as banks scale back their balance sheets, forcing companies to look elsewhere for cash. The phenomenon is well under way in the West, but has been steadily spreading east. In 2012, the CEE region, excluding Russia and Turkey, saw US$4.3bn in issuance. That figure more than doubled to US$8.

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Despite political and social upheaval in Turkey, most view it as strategically vital, with huge long-term growth potential. Since the financial crisis, Western banks have been busily selling off non-core businesses to focus on their core markets. This phenomenon has been evident around the world, especially in emerging markets. “Inter

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. When Marcus Svedberg used to visit Warsaw, he would always swing by the Treasury to discuss the latest round of sales of state-run assets. But on his latest trip to the Polish capital, in March 2014, chief economist at East Capital decided to re-jig his schedule. Poland is in the midst of a mini-economic revolution. May 1 marks the 10

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. “If you visit, it doesn’t feel like an economy in free-fall,” said Marcus Svedberg, chief economist at East Capital. It is a comment that strikes at the heart of the former member of the Yugoslav Republic. The first to break away from the Communist state, Slovenia then spent the 1990s successfully reinventing itself as the Austria on

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Thanks to its debt problems throughout the sovereign debt crisis, Hungary has been what Benoit Anne, head of emerging markets strategy at Societe Generale, called the “poster child of contagion”. But as he points out, that theme is three years old and it might be time to start thinking of the Central European country in a rather diffe

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Alisa Maric embodies the intimate relationship that exists in the Balkans between economics, politics – and chess. An economist by training, the former Serbian sports minister and one of the country’s most popular celebrities is also a woman grandmaster – the world’s highest-ranking chess title restricted to her gender. Any observer w

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Thanks to the Vienna Initiative, set up to stem outflows of capital by Western European lenders out of the region, the Austrian capital has built on its foundations of influence in recent years. Perhaps even the Mongol warriors knew. When the armies of Ogedei, third son of Genghis Khan, reached Vienna in 1241, they were there for a re

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. When Ludwik Sobolewski became CEO of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) in July 2013, few could deny he had the chops for the job. The bourse’s president, Lucian Anghel, was quick to underline his new hire’s credentials. Sobolewski ran the Warsaw Stock Exchange (GPW) for seven years with great aplomb, turning it into the largest indep

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Sturdy Slavic reason underpins the popular Polish proverb, “Better is the enemy of good”, a deeply conservative maxim that suggests trying too hard to excel poses risks. Poland’s economic performance is undoubtedly good – banks and brokers are now revising growth forecasts upwards and the figures suggest it will lead the pack in emerg

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Istanbul has set its heart on building one of the world’s busiest airports among other high-profile projects but with international financing becoming harder to secure and investors’ faith bruised by political instability Turkey’s ambitious construction projects may be slower to get off the ground. Turkey’s outlook has been rosy in re

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Grin and bear it. It’s been that sort of year for the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, which has suffered the sort of torrid time usually reserved for panic-stricken African or Latin American markets. The US Federal Reserve’s decision to begin tapering its QE programme put the lira into a tailspin against the dollar. Branded on

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Real estate group Emlak Konut defied the markets with its revived US$1.6bn follow-on share issue last November. Some investors, however, were stung when a corruption scandal forced them to dump their stock only weeks later, which, coupled with political instability, has left many issuers and investors waiting in the wings. Emlak, whos

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. Thanks to the double whammy of the tapering of quantitative easing in the US and political instability, which have rocked asset prices, investors in Turkey have been on a roller-coaster ride in the past year. Many, however, see little damage to Turkey’s long-term emerging market growth story, despite the headlines. Last year, Turkey p

To see the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com. For all the talk in recent years of “core” and “periphery” European nations, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the Continent has two sets of both. The first group roughly hews the eurozone in half, separating the “good” or fiscally upright nations of the north from the “bad” sweep of largely southern states. But look east and you se