By Andrei Skvarsky

The more than 450 fixed income professionals employed by Jefferies across the world include more than 35 focused on emerging markets in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, the bank said.

By Ivan Anderzhanov

Peter Halloran, founder and chief executive of Pharos Financial Group, has snapped up a Park Avenue bolthole  in New York for $4.3 million from fellow hedge fund supremo Steve Eisman.

Eisman and his wife Valerie Feigen have offloaded their  1125 Park apartment to the Moscow-based Halloran, according to the New York Observer.

Eisman has made his name and fortune by correctly betting on the  US sub-prime blowout while Halloran’s Pharos Russia fund has consistently been best in class for the last decade.

The firm was set up in 1997 by American Halloran with initial capital from Soros Fund Management and Credit Suisse First Boston.

By Marcus Williams

Roubini Global Economics, the research and advisory firm founded by the notorious bear Nouriel Roubini, has hired four strategists to boost its expanding team.

The firm has hired Gina Sanchez has joined the firm as a director for equity and asset allocation strategy, Natalia Gurushina as director for emerging markets strategy and Arun Motianey as director for fixed income strategy.

These three senior strategists are based in the United States. Jennifer Kapila has also joined as financial institutions analyst, based in London. All will work closely with Arnab Das, managing director of market research and strategy based in London and New York, and will contribute “along with strategists soon to be recruited” to give Roubini’s clients advice in asset allocation.

Sanchez previously spent four years as an institutional asset manager, serving at the California Endowment, a $3 billion Los Angeles based foundation and at the Ford Foundation, a $10 billion New York based foundation. Russian Natalia Gurushina worked for Pantera Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund, where she developed investment strategies for both emerging and developed European markets.  Motianey joins as a senior fixed income strategist after twenty years at Citigroup. Kapila has been hired after several years as European banking analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort in London.

Arnab Das, said in a statement: “We’re now building an even stronger force in independent research and advice for our clients..Their strong experience in their specialties and in asset allocation and selection will enable us to pull together a holistic market view of the world and complement what is already probably the most complete macro view available.”

By Ivan Anderzhanov

State Street Global Advisors, the US investment giant which terminated its seven-year Russian joint venture in 2005, today launched its first Russia ETF.

The Boston-based manager is one of only two fund managers offering investment exposure to Russia using Exchange Traded Funds.

The SPDR S&P Russia ETF seeks to track the performance of the S&P BMI Russia Capped Index, which includes companies domiciled in Russia with a float-adjusted market cap of $100 million or more and a minimum value traded of $50 million for the last 12 months at the time of annual reconstitution.

As of February 26, the index included 72 stocks.

“The launch of the SPDR S&P Russia ETF provides investors and investment professionals with diversified, convenient access to a country poised for potential growth as the global economy recovers,” said Anthony Rochte, senior managing director at State Street, said in a statement.

Street Global pulled out of Moscow in 2005 after ending a partnership with local fund manager Pallada Asset Management.

By Marcus Williams

Chris Morrell, the manager of JP Morgan’s emerging alpha plus fund is to step down, is to part company with the US banking group.

Morrell, who joined from Merrill Lynch in 2006, will be replaced as manager of the fund by Ashraf el Ansary, who has served on JP Morgan’s emerging markets team since 1999.

Morrell joined JP Morgan from Merrill Lynch where he was responsible for global emerging market equity sales. He also had a stint at SNC where he was head of international equity sales.

By Jason Corcoran in Moscow

Red Star Asset Management is switching its focus from Russia to global emerging markets following the recruitment of Scott Licamele as a director.

James Fenkner, founder and managing director of Red Star, quit Russia early this year to move to California after working in Russia for 14 years.

Fenkner made the move for family reasons but his relocation has made it logical for the fund to broaden its focus beyond Russia and the CIS.

Fenkner set up Red Star in 2005 after seven years at Russian investment bank Troika Dialog as head of research and initially as chief strategist. The firm was one of the few Russian hedge funds not to gate clients after last year’s crash led to massive redemptions from funds in the region.

Licamele was previously vice president of equity research sales at Renaissance Capital. At Red Star, he will be responsible for emerging markets equity research and business development. He is based in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Prior to working at Renaissance, Licamele headed up North American equity sales and trading for Russia’s Alfa Bank in New York. He also marketed Alfa Capital Partners private equity fund to North American clients. Licamele, who has lived in Russia and Ukraine for over five years, said: “Our strategy is based on three principles. First, global demand for commodities, particularly China’s, will be supportive of commodities prices during the
next decade.

“Second, America’s unprecedented expansionary fiscal and monetary policies will significantly weaken the dollar over the long-term, bolstering the price of dollar-based commodities. Lastly, numerous commodity sector stocks offer tremendous upside – specifically those large and growing companies which are under-represented in market indexes.”

By Ivan Anderzhanov in Moscow

Russia is to received a $4bn loan from the Bank of New York after dropping a $22.5bn lawsuit against the US financial services group.

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin insisted the discounted loan was not part of a deal to drop the decade long money laundering charges against the Bank of New York.

The US bank agreed to pay $14m in court costs, the bank and Russia’s federal customs service said in a joint statement.

The claim was based on the actions of  the bank’s ex-employee Lucy Edwards (born Ludmila Pritzker), who from 1996-1999 participated in illegal banking operations.

Andrey Belyaninov, the head of the Federal Customs Service, said in a statement: “This case is an example of the increased vigilance of the Russian Federation in international financial markets. The fact that the Russian court scrutinized this case and the fact that the dispute was finally settled by an agreement between the parties also demonstrates the efficiency and independence of Russian courts.”

Matthew Biben, executive vice president and deputy general counsel of The Bank of New York Mellon said: “We are gratified by the settlement of this case. This is a common sense resolution that benefits our company, our employees, shareholders and customers. The Bank of New York Mellon is pleased to have this matter behind us and looks forward to supporting our clients which include Russia’s largest companies.”

By Ivan Anderzhanov in Mosow

Russia has agreed to drop money-laundering charges and a $22bn lawsuit against US lender Bank of New York Mellon in return for a miserly $14m.

Russia and the US bank agreed “to sign a friendly agreement” by which the bank will make the payment to Russian customs authorities.

As part of the deal, the bank will also offer Russia a loan at a preferential rate as “a gesture of good will, confirming its willingness to work with Russia.”

Russian customs launched legal proceedings in 2007 claiming $22 bn from the bank, reigniting a case dating back to the 1990s.

The Bank of New York, which in July merged with Mellon Financial Corporation, was investigated by US and Russian authorities on suspicion of letting two Russians launder billions of dollars through one of its accounts.

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Wednesday that this had not been proved.

Russia  filed a $22.5bn lawsuit in May 2007 against the Bank of New York, America’s oldest financial institution, for money laundering which allegedly took place towards the end of the 1990s.

Two Russian-born American residents, former BNY vice president Lucy Edwards and her husband Peter Berlin, opened the account in 1996, allegedly allowing billions of dollars in funds to be channelled out of Russia without paying taxes.

The investigation prompted a storm of media coverage and a series of related money-laundering probes worldwide.

In 2000, Swiss authorities targeted the bank  in an investigation into the suspected embezzlement of a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan to Russia via Bank of New York accounts.

At the time, the bank issued a strongly-worded statement rejecting the new case. It said: “It should be noted that the events related to the lawsuit occurred more than 10 years ago and were previously resolved by the company.”

The bank agreed to pay $38m to settle the case in a US court in November 2005, including $12m dollars in compensation to victims and a fine of $26m.

Berlin and Edwards pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and other crimes, and were sentenced in July 2006 to six months of house arrest and fines totalling $725,000.

By Jason Corcoran in Moscow

Sergey Aleynikov, the Russian-born computer developer charged with stealing precious Goldman Sachs‘ trading codes, started his career at the Ministry for Transportation in Moscow as a trainspotter.

Aleynikov, a naturalised US citizen who emigrated from Russia in 1991, allegedly unlawfully copied, duplicated, downloaded and transferred computer codes from Goldman Sachs and uploaded the codes to a computer server in Germany.

The case has caused a firestorm on Wall Street in the US by throwing a spotlight on the highly prized trading systems created by Goldman Sachs  to gain an edge on rivals in the financial markets.

EmergingMarkets.me can reveal that Aleynikov started out as an applied mathematics student at the Moscow Institute of Transportation Engineering in 1987. As part of his internship, he worked for the Railway Consolidated Computer centre for three years in a venture sponsored by the Russian Ministry for Transportation.

In  Aleynikov’s entry on the  networking site LinkedIN, he describes the work as involving “optimizing train schedules based on known passenger transportation demand, train capacity, transportation costs, and other parameters with a goal of minimizing the number of trains required to serve geographic areas.”

Before finishing his degree in Moscow, Aleynikov transferred to the US where he finished his studies at the University of New Jersey- New Brunswick.

Goldman divulged little about the trading programs, though court documents related to the case said the code that Aleynikov was suspected of stealing allowed the bank to “engage in sophisticated high-speed and high-volume trades on various stock and commodities markets.”

The software generated “many millions of dollars of profits per year” for the bank, the documents said.

Aleynikov resigned to take a job with a new company “that intended to engage in high-volume automated trading,” for triple his $400,000 salary, according to the complaint.

Aleynikov, who was reported yesterday to  have met terms for his $750,000 bail, counts ballroom dancing (see his moves below on YouTube), along with functional programming and concurrent programming, as his three interests.

Once a trainspotter, always…