Nicholas Watson in Prague
Fri, 28th Oct -- Private equity funds launched at the bottom of an economic cycle have traditionally yielded the best returns. But for those funds focused on Emerging Europe, this time around things might not be quite so simple.

Clare Nuttall in Almaty
Fri, 28th Oct -- Aureos Capital has made its second Kazakh investment by buying a stake in Derzhava Corporation and the emerging market-focused private equity firm plans to close two more deals by the end of the year. Further proof, say analysts, that the combination of the global crisis and the subsequent recovery is opening up new opportunities for private equity in Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region.

Ben Aris in Moscow
Tue, 18th Oct -- The World Bank's commercial arm, the IFC, is getting into the Russian fund business. In June, it launched the third fund focused on the country's banks, the Russian Banking Opportunity Fund, which it hopes will tap into the potential growth of the financial sector and help drive consolidation of the sector at the same time.

Tim Gosling in Moscow
Mon, 17th Oct -- A final deal on SynBio - the first Russian-led international joint venture in the biotechnology sector - was sealed in September, with Rusnano as a cornerstone investor. With Synbio planning to launch innovative drugs on international markets by 2015, is Russia's state venture capital fund finally about to start delivering concrete results?

Ben Aris in Moscow
Fri, 28th Oct -- It's every entrepreneur's dream: you set up a company, spend a decade building up the business, and finally sell out to a strategic investor, pocketing billions of dollars. That dream is coming true for an increasing number of Russian business owners: in the last 12 months, a slew of multinationals have taken the plunge and spent billions of dollars buying a slice of the Russian consumer market.