Urban is a full time member of Standish’s Emerging Markets Debt team, responsible for communicating the team’s views both internally and externally. He participates in all of the team’s strategy discussions, speaks regularly with existing and prospective clients and writes all of the monthly and quarterly reports.

Current situation: At the time of writing (March 18th), the Crimea peninsula (an autonomous region of Ukraine but part of Russia from 1783 to 1954) has voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. The referendum is regarded as unconstitutional and illegitimate by the Ukrainian authorities and by both the US and the EU but Russia has recognized the result and is moving to officially annex Crimea in the short term. The US and the EU have responded with limited sanctions and Ukraine has stepped up military preparedness but at this point the crisis does not appear likely to go beyond Crimea. 

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