Financial markets continue to be in disarray.

I spent my week in New York at client meetings, then went on to Brussels to present to the European Commission and ended the week in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha for SWF meetings, panels and a keynote speech at the MENA Investment Management Forum.

The week also marked my first official Twitterview ahead of the conference, which, I have to say, ended up being a lot of fun, especially because many industry observers jumped on the tweets and asked their own questions (or made comments). You can see the full transcript here.

Some of the more notable developments this week:

– The ICI commented on a SEC study on creating a new credit-rating agency board/self-regulatory organization, suggesting it would alter how asset-backed securities are rated.

– Nikko Asset Management under Tim McCarthy (see my “View from Asia” fireside chat from Monaco with him here) completed its acquisition of DBS Asset Management, adding $8 billion in assets. That makes it the biggest regional asset manager headquartered in Asia. Along with its Australia acquisition of Tyndall Investments, Nikko now is becoming an Asia powerhouse that could move East-to-West at some point.

– Schroders, after gathering over $1 billion in two months to its locally domiciled Asia Asset Income fund, is going to offer more outcome-oriented products across the region.

– Qatar injected cash into Greece as the nation also implemented more cuts (Qatar Holding also is planning to create a standalone investment vehicle to buy stakes in, or to take over, gold companies). A few of the largest Greek banks and asset managers asked me to present to the government in the fall, stay tuned for an on the ground blog next month.

– Financial Research Corp. filed for bankruptcy this week and sold is subadvisory, lifecycle fund research, 529 college savings plan research and alternative investments product lines to Strategic Insight.

– Dexia today was nationalized by the French and Belgian governments, making it the first bank to fall victim to the Greek debt crisis. The NY Times reported that Dexia has global credit exposure of about $700 billion and will create a so-called bad bank to house its troubled assets, including billions of euros worth of Greek, Italian, Portugese and Italian debt. Earlier in the week the bank considered selling off its asset management unit in an attempt to resolve “structural problems”.

– Moody’s downgraded Italy’s credit rating from Aa2 to A2, the first downgrade by the rating agency for the country in two decades.

– Given the heightened ETF discussion after the UBS rogue trades (UBS recently laid off Francos Gouws and Yassine Bouhara, who ran the Delta One division), BlackRock this week made statements in support of high standards of disclosure and stronger uniform regulation, specifically stating that ETFs started out as transparent, liquid, simple vehicles, and now some have become too opaque. Last week, Fidelity in a response to an ESMA consultation paper called for complex ETFs and Newcits to be removed from the UCITS framework. Last month, Chile’s risk commission removed Dublin-domiciled UCITS from Chilean pension funds by making them restricted investments, over concerns around the Irish debt crisis.