Rising above the doom and gloom, thankfully we have the return of the interesting, witty and creative marketing campaign that the structured products industry is so famed for. Without competition from the moribund structured finance industry, which has almost acronymed itself into an early grave, the fight back begins.

Thriving equity markets are pretty much always good news in structured products land, so the latest injection of hope to brittle financial markets has been well-received. The latest jump in equity markets from Asia through the world’s time zones came as the US government finally took the helm at mortgage making giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, injecting a reported US$200bn into the coffers of the beleaguered mortgage makers.

You can’t miss iShares’ marketing campaign for ETFs if you live in London and take the time to look up as you walk around. The marketing campaign is slapped on the sides of buses and taxis, peers at you while you ascend tube escalators, and has taken over the front and backside of one of the capital’s free newspapers.

Custodian of the Treat Customers Fairly initiative in the UK, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has declared its intent by taking a hedge fund manager to task. All well and good, and you might say it was about time these clever ex-investment bankers were taken to task.

The investment banking sector received its first slug of good news this weekend, with the US$50bn acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America. Although BofA’s stock fell, Merrill’s rose. And it’s been a long time since the stock of an investment bank has risen on any event in continually trampled financial markets.

The decision by many an Asian distributor to stop using Lehman Brothers as an issuer has proven both prophetic and prudent, even though many of the distributors believed the US Federal Reserve would come to the rescue if the worst was to happen. But the worst did come to pass and the Fed, contrary to most people’s expectations and against the Bear Stearns precedent, refused to guarantee a portion of the US investment bank’s losses.

There is one man left standing at Lehman Brothers and he has money. It’s not Dick Fuld, and it’s not HR or marketing, or even the asset management team. We won’t tell you his name but we will tell you that he is still spending his money wisely, at last. For a bank that has spewed so much cash into the ether from the swashbuckling boom that preceded the credit crunch, sense has now prevailed.

If you follow English football – and apparently the whole world does – you may have noticed a striking similarity between what is happening in the financial markets and what is occurring at the football team Manchester City.

The Swiss dancers in their lederhosen are coming to save us all the way from Paradeplatz, home to Credit Suisse, the bank that has just offered to buy damaged Lehman products from those privy to the Credit Suisse private banking network.