Claudia Parsons of Reuters and Calpers Chief Investment Officer Joe Dear discuss the pension fund’s appetite for risk on CNBC, after a Reuters investigation into how Calpers is delving further into alternative investments despite suffering heavy losses.

More on Calpers:

• Former Calpers CIO says did right thing
• FACTBOX-What is California pension fund Calpers?
• Can Calpers keep its promises?

Michael Chiu, senior investment manager at ING Investment Management, has China Mobile as its biggest holding, and is overweight the banks as it plays down the potential impact of NPLs.

Dubai returns to the fixed-income sphere for the first time in more than a year after raising about $2 billion from dirham and dollar-denominated Islamic bonds.

Confidence in the emirate had run aground earlier this year as investors bet on Dubai's state-linked entities not being able refinance debt. So far, this year it has met all its obligations and with the fresh issue booking about $6.5 billion from regional and international investors, Dubai's doomsday scenario appears to be vanishing. 

With much of the United Arab Emirates' oil coming from the largest of the emirates Abu Dhabi, investors have flocked to the capital this year as appetite for good emerging market debt revives. The spread between Abui Dhabi and Dubai widened at its peak to over 500 basis points in February, but Dubai government efforts to restore confidence -- kickstarted by the UAE central bank buying $10 billion of its bonds -- has helped spreads narrow to about 200 basis points.

Dubai still has a long way go. The next test will be property developer Nakheel resolving its $3.5 billion Islamic bond maturing on Dec. 14 and then a raft of debts in 2010.....but as Harold Wilson once said, "A week's long time in politics."  

The headline in the Gulf News English language daily reads 'UAE tops world on per capita carbon footprint'.

For a place so reliably bathed in sunlight, the Dubai property explosion seems to have generated enough construction noise to drown out the environmental debate raging elsewhere in the world.

For the first-time visitor, the scale of the global construction superlatives - The Palm, made from reclaimed land jutting out defiantly into the Gulf, the skyscrapers built in a region where there is no shortage of space - is staggering.

The amount of environmentally 'sinfull' concrete poured over the last decade is ncalculable. Billboards lauding the benefits of solar power look like a bit of an after thought.

Climate change was just beginning to take hold as an issue for property developers when the economic downturn struck and put paid to nascent environmental ambitions.  "Green is not cheap," says Markus Giebel, chief executive of Dubai property group Deyaar Development. "Dubai was on the right track, but there's no money now. People are thinking about survival."

Dubai has sufficient superlatives – record-setting landmarks unique in their size, cost or concept -- to last it for the next decade – so enough already, says Deyaar CEO Markus Giebel.

“I endorse having the tallest building in the world, the first seven-star hotel in the world, the palm,” he says. “What I don’t endorse are attempts to now outdo these superlatives…they are going to last us the next 10 to 15 years.”

Dubai is home -- amongst other attractions -- to the world's largest indoor ski slope, the world's tallest tower, and the world's first, albeit self-rated, seven-star hotel that also sports its own Rolls Royce fleet and helicopter landing platform. The global financial crisis brought a real estate boom in the emirate to a screeching halt, leading to a raft of new, hugely ambitious projects  -- including a 1-km high tower and the world's largest mall -- to be shelved or delayed.

Socially responsible investing, which takes into account social, environmental and governance risks, is arguably still in its infancy in the Gulf, where the enormous wealth created by hydrocarbons sometimes flows into extravagant projects like an indoor ski resort.

But Mustafa Abdel-Wadood, managing director of Abraaj Capital -- the Middle East's biggest private equity firm -- sees SRI as enlightened self interest and the firm puts its own money where its mouth is.

Fred Sicre, executive director of Abraaj, told us the firm -- which signs up to United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing (UNPRI) -- has a 5+5+5 plan, where it encourages employees to donate 5% of bonuses to a charitable pool, 5 days for community/charitable work and the firm itself gives 5% of net revenues to a charity. Sicre himself taught at the first class yesterday on entrepreneureship.

"When we invest for pure business reasons into an education business or a hospital group, in a certain sense, we are looking at this also from a sustainable investment (point of view) for this region because the competitiveness of a country is directly linked to the health of the population," Sicre says.

"We feel we have great opportunities and responsibilities to bring portfolio companies to adhere to sustainble investment practices, whether its security or health standards... It's just about being good human beings and doing good practical businesses."

Watch a clip below for Sicre talking about this 5+5+5 plan.

Starting Monday, Reuters is inviting  business leaders from various sectors in Dubai, Riyadh and Cairo to discuss key challenges facing them in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the lessons they have learnt.

Is the downturn over or are we set for a double-dip? Will buyers flock back to Dubai's property bonanza or will they stay away for the foreseeable future? Will the oil-reliant economies of the Gulf manage to diversify as they had hoped at the start of the boom in 2002 or will they continue to rest on their barrels of crude? Read this for a preview.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne will set out the Conservative Party's strategy for rebuilding the UK economy in an exclusive Thomson Reuters Newsmaker at 11 a.m. on Monday, October 26.

We will bring you full coverage of Osborne's speech, including a live video feed and blog, after which we will conduct a short social media interview with him.

We want you to send us your questions to put to him.

This is your chance to grill the man who, according to the latest opinion polls, looks set to inhabit Number 11 Downing Street after the upcoming general election.

Be it on bankers' bonuses, tax havens or the Conservative Party's plans for leading us out of a recession, send us your questions now using the form below or via Twitter using the hashtag #askosborne.

Two graphs (from Scott Barber) to remind that what you get from assets depends on the currency:

Investors smelling profits in commodities are using the sector as an early cycle play, alongside equities, because a lack of production capacity means higher prices sooner rather than later. 

Historically, prices of natural resources lag equities, which typically front run the economic cycle by between 18 to 24 months. The change is also partly due to the tumbling dollar, a major driver in recent weeks.

The natural resources sector is also one of the last to price in economic expansion. But not this time.

Global capacity utilisation rates in petroleum products and mining between 2002 and 2007 averaged more than 90 percent. Analysts estimate those levels fell to 80 percent — still very high — in July 2009.

In contrast, utilisation rates among manufacturing companies was estimated at around 65 percent last July from about 80 percent between 2002 and 2007. Equivalent numbers for the auto sector were 45 percent and 80 percent respectively.

The large output gap in manufacturing and the auto sector means production can ramp up easily without any bottlenecks when the global economy sees stronger growth, albeit from low levels.

Not so in commodities, where firms are running a tight ship.