Economy and planning minister Muhammad Al Jasser, in a rare and wide-ranging interview with Euromoney, seeks to allay rising fears over the Saudi Arabian economy’s fiscal dependence on oil revenues while detailing his priorities for reform

QNB became the Middle East’s biggest bank last year and is now stepping up acquisitions abroad. Can it follow Qatar’s corporate champions and transform into an emerging market-focused bank worthy of the state’s newfound financial power?

The agency has hit the headlines with its aggressive ratings actions against western sovereign credits. But those decisions, like the man behind the agency, do not hold up against the simplest scrutiny.

Cleantech offers limited scope for investors; Resource-efficient conventional companies top performers

In his first interview as new CFO of Embraer, Paulo Penido Marques says the company is well placed to diversify and grow with its current balance sheet – but he is tempted by the rates on offer in the international debt capital market to pre-fund some 2012 capex.

A dynamic economy is transforming the country. The central bank governor predicts good times ahead for a nation rich in resources and competitive in manufacturing.

Hakan Binbasgil, chief executive of Akbank, had a busy start to his new job. “I have met 15,000 Akbankers since I began in this role,” he says. “It was a priority for me to meet everyone in the organization. To meet our ambitions we need the contribution of everyone at the bank.”

BTMU expands FX business outside Japan; Strong yen boosts Japanese M&A flow

In a society obsessed with maximizing profit, Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and pioneer of microfinance through Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, has a new goal: to get business and finance to take off its ‘profit-maximizing glasses’ and think about its role in society instead

Mary MacLeod jumped companies and cultures to join ICBC International as deputy CEO – and became the most powerful foreign banker in China, with an eye on global dominance. The pressure is on, but MacLeod isn’t showing it... yet.

IMF senior economist Manmohan Singh says the shadow-banking system is a necessary part of the monetary universe, and therefore something that regulators and policymakers must thoroughly understand if they are to have any success in improving economic performance.

The European Central Bank would fail European Banking Authority stress tests, but this is not the issue the European markets should be worried about, says Willem Buiter, one of the world’s most distinguished macroeconomists

Having secured permanent capital just before the big equity market sell-off, Glencore now has the financial strength to boost production and acquire cheap mining assets. In the long run, shareholders should reap the benefits. For now, they’re still licking their wounds after the Swiss firm’s record-breaking IPO. Peter Lee tells the inside story of the deal of the year.

Tradition has it that the head of the Federal Reserve is the most influential central banker in the world. Ben Bernanke still is. But Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, is beginning to run him close.

Australia has struck it rich, and lucky, as it has used its natural resources to benefit from the China spending boom. But the careful stewardship of its treasurer, Wayne Swan, has played a key role in making it the best-performing economy among the world’s richer, developed nations. Not that he is likely to get much credit at home, as Eric Ellis reports.

Henderson Global Investors' CIO, David Jacob, talks to Euromoney about policymakers creating rather than stemming market volatility, investor safe havens and how the US downgrade has affected the dollar’s future as a reserve currency

Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer’s bid to be managing director of the IMF might have been successful, had the position been awarded on merit alone. Euromoney spoke to Fischer the day after the IMF announced it had selected Christine Lagarde.

AIA CEO Mark Tucker talks about spending AIA’s $5 billion cash pile, the potential for acquisitions and the key business drivers in the toughest Asian markets.

AIA CEO Mark Tucker outlines plans for AIA to catch up in bancassurance and expounds his views on the key China market and the competition in Asia

For almost 10 years Josef Ackermann has regularly proved his critics wrong. His latest retort has been to rebalance Deutsche Bank's business mix and maintain returns within a much-changed investment bank. But can he meet the aggressive new targets he has set?

In his career, he has helped Egypt through a time of crisis and made Ahli United Bank a regional powerhouse.

The rise of Itaú, led by its chief executive, Roberto Setúbal, is one of the success stories of a generation in banking. Consistency and a canny approach to acquisitions have been the key to Setúbal’s achievements. And that is not going to change even as Itaú Unibanco cements its place as one of the world’s largest banks. Rob Dwyer reports from São Paulo.

After a few difficult years, culminating in the resignation of its long-serving chief executive, Italy’s biggest lender is hoping for a fresh start. But plenty of hurdles need to be overcome if it is ever to reassume its position as one of Europe’s leading banks.

North Korea. Zimbabwe. Tunisia. Algeria. Iraq. Pakistan. Egypt. It’s a list of the world’s flashpoints. And they’re all part of Egyptian entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris’s unique telecoms empire. So when his Orascom group needed financing, and then sought a buyer, it presented Sawiris’s advisers with a unique set of challenges. Eric Ellis tells the fascinating story of corporate finance in the new world order.

In his final interview as chief executive of HSBC, the bank he served for almost 40 years, Mike Geoghegan answers the questions that matter. Did he jump or was he pushed? Should HSBC remain supervised and headquartered in the UK? What happened to the Nedbank takeover? Will the bank list in Shanghai? And he reflects on a stellar career that mirrored the globalization of banking, and in which he was forced to deal with many financial crises.

In an exclusive interview with Euromoney, Bill Rhodes, who played the most prominent role of any banker in emerging markets debt restructurings in the 1980s and 1990s, warns that implementing a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism in Europe would be short sighted and could worsen funding conditions for peripheral European sovereigns, not improve them.

Russia’s finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, steered the country through the global financial crisis. The country emerged not just intact, but enhanced in the eyes of global investors. Now Kudrin faces perhaps his biggest battle of all – keeping a firm hold on spending as an election approaches. By Miriam Elder in Moscow.

Israel’s resilience during the financial crisis and its aftermath proves that Stanley Fischer is worthy of the respect he commands at the top of the global financial community. Dominic O’Neill reports.

Gary Gensler is on a mission to make the CFTC the world’s most influential financial markets regulator. He wields an unprecedented mandate to interpret the statute book and thereby shape the future of banking. But his former colleagues in the banking industry claim his quest for power is based on personal ambition, causing him to ride roughshod over their reasonable opinions and creating a template that will bring unnecessary hardship to the financial industry and the broader economy. Hamish Risk interviewed the man many bankers call the “most dangerous man in finance”.

Finance minister Korn Chatikavanij has steered the Thai economy successfully through huge political and social upheaval. But his long-term aim is to connect with Thailand’s people, and not just its financial and business elite, to bring prosperity to the majority. Eric Ellis shadowed Korn as he travelled beyond Bangkok, examining the extent of the grassroots challenges Korn faces to effect meaningful change in a country ill-served by previous incumbents.