The Romanian government, many observers reckon, is playing a game of bluff. The IMF is told tales about privatization and restructuring while the populace is fed sops. The government, meanwhile is mired in inaction. Investors aren’t going to rush into such a market until they are offered deals that are sufficiently attractive to outweigh unexpected risks.

A small Andean nation proves that it is possible to successfully restructure a bond issue. And to a great extent, the success of the Ecuador exchange offer was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jean Lemierre, president of the EBRD, discusses the bank's role in central and eastern Europe, where it is still struggling to define its place.

It may have been buried towards the back of a long report but it has certainly elbowed its way into the spotlight since. A call by Paul Myners, in his review of the UK's investment industry, to address how and why fund managers pay commissions to brokers has sparked a heated debate.

Whatever Russia's government is or is not doing, Russian companies have found their own reasons for making improvements in corporate governance and boosting shareholder value. At least one market player dubs this consolidation process reprivatization. However there is still much to be done to restore the brittle confidence of local investors and only after this has happened will foreign funds consider returning to a market which knows how to burn them. Ben Aris reports from Moscow

Evgeny Shvidler, president of Russia’s sixth largest oil company Sibneft, talks about corporate governance and strategy.

Turkey’s idiosyncratic form of financial engineering involved the creation of a web of corruption linking the governing elite, through the state banks, to its cronies. The private banks fed well off the massive government debt this generated. Then, in February, they hit the wall in a liquidity crisis that lopped more than 30% off the value of the Turkish lira.

The markets’ goal of next-day settlement of equities and bonds will only be achieved if there’s full implementation of straight-through processing. The more volumes continue to increase, the more urgent this becomes. Yet two rival systems have not agreed on common standards and sceptics fear that implementing full STP and T+1 settlement will be a decade-long project for cross-border trading.

Kemal Dervis, the new mega-minister of the Turkish economy and former World Bank vice-president, talks about the Turkish economy and the growing sense of imminent change in his country.

In Russia, large financial-industrial groups exist alongside a new breed of commercially-minded and successful industrial groups that have made their money by more traditional and honest means.

Chile is reckoned to be the best organized country in Latin America, so no-one was expecting any surprises when Santiago was chosen to host the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) annual meetings in March. It was expected that there would be lots of optimism about Mexico and its investment-grade credit rating, optimism too about the surprisingly smooth way in which the Peruvian elections seem to be panning out, and positive noises about a US soft landing and the way in which Argentina, with the help of the IMF, was attempting to extricate itself from economic stagnation.

Indonesia is still trying to get back on its feet after a crippling economic downturn. As if that is not hard enough, the country is also looking to make the transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. The currency weakened again last month and the ratings agencies are nervous. Against the odds, Indonesia’s crisis management skills are improving.

Chairman elect, Hawkpoint

The internet age is challenging one of the great modern myths of Hong Kong - that betting is not permitted in the territory. Indeed, something of a crisis is occurring because of the explosive growth of betting on the internet by Hong Kong residents. The government coffers are suffering, one of the oldest and most powerful groups in the city complains that it is losing up to $7 billion a year in revenues and cries of foul can be heard as far away as the local legislative council.

Euromoney polled investors at 3,000 investing institutions in 31 countries, asking them to rank the individuals and teams whose credit research they rate most highly. The response was four times that of last year, with nearly 340 firms replying to our questionnaire. The winners were two bulge-bracket US firms and two of the largest European banks.

The marble floors are still in place at the EBRD’s office on London’s Bishopsgate, the grand pillars and glass still deck the waiting area and the presidential suite remains with its grand vistas. But little else at the EBRD remains of the Jacques Attali era. Since he launched the bank with such a grandiose vision 10 years ago, it has fallen on leaner times. The grand claims to transform entire economies have been replaced by the limited promises to clean up management practices in its designated area of interest in eastern and central Europe. The men now running the show are no longer Europe’s heavy hitters but technocrats bent as much on curbing internal costs as doing imaginative deals.

Carol Galley, London's most famous fund manager, is leaving her job at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers after more than 30 years in the business.

The huge growth in the number of European corporates of varying credit quality tapping the capital markets has led to massive demand for ratings. The ratings agencies are staffing up to meet this challenge. But there remains a question mark over the value of the service they provide, especially in high yield, the most credit-intensive area of all.