There is an unmistakable air of bullishness about the Middle Eastern real estate sector once again. Dubai has announced a flurry of projects reminiscent of the heady days of the mid-2000s including Mohammed bin Rashid City, which will include more than 100 hotels, a theme park and the world's largest shopping mall, as well as a new artificial island valued at $1.6bn in construction costs alone. The announcements come amid a double digit increase in passenger traffic through the emirate's airport to more than 58m, while 19,000 new hotel rooms are expected to be added in the next few years. Neighbour Abu Dhabi has a similarly grandiose vision, while Qatar has become increasingly vocal about its plans as hosting the FIFA World Cup bolsters its infrastructure requirements.

More bond trading will switch to electronic platforms this year, as impending financial regulation and the extraordinary interest-rate environment continue to drive the biggest upheaval in the fixed-income market’s 60-year existence. To what extent this technology on its own can establish a template for the future, however, is not so certain. Andrew Cavenagh reports.

A string of distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks continues to stymie the financial-services sector, spurring calls for tougher defensive measures and, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, renewing debate over the distinction between ordinary cyber crime and a more onerous brand of online terrorism. Dave Simons reports from Boston.

In January 2011, Australia had two new exchanges ready to launch, and a cross border exchange merger in the offing. Two years later it had no cross-border exchanges, one alternative to the incumbent exchange and it had quashed competition in equity clearing.  LCH.Clearnet looked on the face of it to have achieved something of a foothold in the market as it received local regulatory approval to clear energy, commodity and environmental derivatives on FEX Global, the country’s derivatives and energy exchange, but a fully clearing and settlement facility licence is still some way away.  Has Australia lost the global plot? Is there more to come that will bring the country into the global mainstream? Does it want to be there? Or does it want to focus on the relatively local opportunity that the Chinese market offers?  Or, is the reality that what had been a boldly expanding market is now shown up as a conservative heartland? Dan Barnes went in search of answers.

It remains to be seen whether the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) will be implemented on a global level. Despite a renewed effort from regulators and industry bodies to form a single global system of LEIs, there appears to be an increasingly fragmented approach. Will we really see one standard LEI, or will we be left with a few competing initiatives? Andrew Neil spoke to Mark Davies, general manager and head of Avox, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DTCC, on the latest developments.