Hedging the world

The world’s leading private sovereign lenders were battered last year by the Argentinian crisis and escalating currency and interest rate volatility. How has the world’s leading multilateral weathered the storm? Naomi Humphries asks World Bank chief financial officer Gary Perlin

The past 18 months have been tough for most sovereign lenders. Some of the top firms – including Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Fleet Boston – have watched losses on Latin American exposures send their stocks spiralling downwards. Fingers burnt, many lenders are stepping back from emerging markets sovereign lending. The Bank for International Settlements’ third-quarter 2002 lending statistics show credit extended to Latin America continues to contract. But the International Bank for