The market, like nature, is red in tooth and claw. It has no concept of ethics, morality or justice. Its agents are predatory and are concerned mainly with their own survival. They have no thought for the good of the system. That doesn't mean the market is bad or that it doesn't work. It means that present prescriptions for emerging economies do not reflect these realities. Nothing highlights more starkly the inappropriateness of the blind application of free market thinking to emerging markets more than the role of hedge funds. By Simon Brady.

To many of the small family-owned firms of Switzerland's Lac Léman, private banking is still all about providing a discreet service to those old-money Europeans who still have time to contemplate their investments amid champagne corks and peacocks. But the leisurely approach of these private bankers is under threat from aggressive global institutions who see private banking as nothing less than a personalized form of investment banking. Jules Stewart reports.

Following currency devaluations and stock-market crashes, Asia now faces its biggest challenge: a full-blown credit crunch. No big bond issues will be done for the rest of the year, spreads on outstanding bonds have gone haywire and trading has ground to a halt. Local sources of credit have also dried up. Corporate borrowers can expect little help from their bankers; devaluation has blasted a hole in many local banks' balance sheets and they have no money to lend even if they wanted to. Peter Lee reports on the likely shape of things to come.

"Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young." So Dr Johnson had it. In the case of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, an institution founded by Scots and still governed by one, it has grown to be the world's most profitable financial group. The unique international officer culture that has driven it – young men caught young, trained up, messed together, posted, reposted, in the bank for life and rarely back in the UK – will have to change, but it's bending and adapting rather than breaking. Steven Irvine reports on its fitness for the 21st century.

In their desire to expand in Asia, US investment banks have little choice but to get into bed with local partners. The most dramatic of the relationships so far forged has been Morgan Stanley's pioneering joint venture with the People's Bank of China. Will it blossom into a lasting and profitable marriage or will cultural clashes turn the partners against each other? Tony Shale reports

Issuer: GPA Amount: $4.05 billion Launched: March 11 Lead manager: Morgan Stanley

It wasn't just the Singapore futures operation that was badly managed. The lack of controls that allowed Nick Leeson to lose $1.4 billion was symptomatic of the lousy way Barings was run throughout Asia. The culture clash between the traders of Baring Securities and the merchant bankers of Baring Brothers meant that most executives cared more about protecting their own departments than about making the group work.

Heavily indebted and with puny domestic savings, Africa ought to offer attractions for interested foreign equity investors. Inflows have increased but local equity markets are thin and illiquid, privatizations halting and company research scanty. Funds with an Africa label feel obliged to buy something Africa-related. Have they always chosen wisely?

He is the man they said would always remain in the shadow of Alfred Herrhausen, but they were wrong. Hilmar Kopper, speaker of the managing board of Deutsche Bank, is on the way to becoming a giant in world banking in his own right – a name to rival Abs, Ulrich, Guth and Christians. In the first full interview he has given since becoming speaker, he speaks to Padraic Fallon.

Goldman Sachs has risen to pre-eminence as a global securities house. It is a convincing first in Euromoney's ranking this month of the world's best investment banks. But the US firm has two faces. For its clients it is the vigilant, attentive, even enthralling provider of first-class services. For its rivals it is a mean and aggressive raptor of deals. Which picture is right?

Institutional investors say the market has been rigged in the final offering of British Telecom shares. Warburg may find its efforts to please one client – the Treasury – damage relations with everybody else.

Citicorp suffered the latest in a series of disasters when president Richard Braddock left in unusual circumstances on the eve of a crucial capital­raising exercise. Its tendency to stumble into trouble has obscured chairman John Reed's success in reviving a bank that teetered on the brink of extinction. But ahead lies the big task of changing Citi's anarchic, competitive culture, with its hunger for revenue rather than profit.

In July, debt restructuring committee chairman Bill Rhodes described the signing of agreement in principle on a Brazilian Brady plan as the end of the Latin American debt crisis – a month later US bank stocks dipped 1% in a day's trading on fears that the plan would collapse. Brazilian debt prices crashed as the political upheaval in the country deepened. But against the odds, the commercial banks have pushed ahead with the plan.

The merger between Manufacturers Hanover and Chemical defied conventional wisdom.

Last month, Fidel Castro, president of Cuba since 1959, gave an exclusive interview to Euromoney editor Garry Evans – his first interview with the western press in years. The old dog is having to learn new tricks. While he makes it clear he is not about to allow democracy or convert Cuba to capitalism, he is gung-ho about encouraging foreign investment. But, with the Cuban economy going into a tailspin, he admits he has little choice.

Want to invest in repackaged loans for low-cost black housing? Or the City of Johannesburg? South African telecommunications? The lifting of sanctions on South Africa could unleash a pent-up demand for funds totalling $3 billion to $4 billion a year or more.

In the first quarter of 1991, as European stock markets roared ahead by an average of 20%, the most profitable – and potentially the riskiest – game for equity brokers was the bought deal. Houses make up to £8 million ($13.5 million) a deal selling large chunks of equity held by one company in another. Some brokers even suggest that a new mechanism for distributing shares has come of age.

Later this year 50 people will go on trial in Venice charged with complicity in illegal arms trafficking to Iran. Among the defendants will be leading figures, past and present, from the world of Italian finance as well as senior government officials. Evidence amassed over several years strongly suggests that banks in a number of European countries have been involved.

Gulf bankers have been through a trauma — and there is more pain to come. News of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait brought instant demand for cash, a rapid fall in local currencies and a haemorrhage of funds from the region. Some institutions will not survive; others must undergo rapid change. And as bankers set about repairing the damage there are warnings of further shocks to come.

"The grand old man of Wall Street" is a title John Weinberg, chairman of Goldman Sachs, wears uneasily.

Babacar Ndiaye, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), is only too well aware of the need to present a more positive image of Africa as a continent of business opportunities, given the lively international interest in eastern Europe.

The soaring Tokyo Stock Exchange prevented Japan's Ministry of Finance from realising its ambition to restructure the country's smaller banks and securities houses. So, in concert with the Bank of Japan, it engineered the crash that sent the Nikkei plummeting. To outsiders, Japan's financial regulators appeared to be in open conflict. And the lack of clear guidance caused the jitters that greased the skids under the TSE. Tony Shale reports on the plot that fooled the world.

Reform of the Soviet financial system is causing tension between the newly-licensed banks and Gosbank, the state monolith-turned-supervisor. It seems that the co-operative banks are leading the drive towards such free market practices as client confidentiality. Ron Cooper reports from Moscow on what officials of one co-op bank and Gosbank say about each other.

On September 26 last year, a new Russian revolution got under way: a quiet revolution, which has passed almost unnoticed in the West.

With his four wives and baronial castle, Jacob Palmstierna, chief executive of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, had long been a target of the gossip-mongers in Stockholm. Not very pleasant gossip at that: his haughty manner had made Palmstierna unpopular as long ago as his college days. So when details of a juicy little scandal over his personal taxes began to leak out earlier this year, Sweden thoroughly enjoyed the whole affair, particularly the part where police raided S-E-Banken, the Wallenberg bank. But Palmstierna's resignation last month is bad news for all of the Swedish financial community, as Neil Osborn explains.

The best that can be said for Citibank is that it wasn't solely to blame for the most embarrassing deal in years; Chase, Salomon and Lazard should all bow their heads for their parts in the LBO financing that so nearly sent the world's markets into the abyss. Only the Japanese were blameless – even though everyone tried to put the blame on them. Here, Peter Lee reveals how the incredible earnings projections for UAL were developed and names the executives who put the transaction together. And one moral emerges from the story: if you're a mean, hard-nosed CFO, sooner or later the banks will exact their revenge.

The market for asset-backed securities could make the corporate bond market look like a minnow – there are trillions at stake. Peter Lee assesses the bond-boggling numbers.

For 40 years, all roads of Italian capitalism have led to a single man at a single merchant bank – Enrico Cuccia and Mediobanca. During the past four years this obsessively secretive 80 year old, whom his close friend André Meyer considered to be Europe’s best financier, was nearly dethroned. He stays, but what succeeds him? Steven Solomon looks at the man who has built up Italy’s oligopolistic family capitalism.

Secretive, aggressive, unpredictable and highly successful, the state fund managers of the Kuwait Investment Office (KIO) are among the world's most important investors. Only the Swiss Big Three banks have more funds invested internationally than the $60 billion or more of the tiny emirate's oil wealth now in play around the globe. Who makes the decisions? What's the strategy? And what are the internal politics? By Martin French

Private banking is a business that more and more banks want to be in. It looks easy; go to Geneva and buy one of the banks already operating there. American Express did that, and had the foresight to ensure that the old owner, Edmond Safra, would not compete directly for five years. The five years are up next month, and Safra has a score to settle.