Oracle is at it again. In early March, just weeks after concluding its takeover of PeopleSoft, one of the most acrimonious, and at times personal, hostile takeovers in years, the enterprise software company jumped back on the hostile acquisition trail.

Paul Wolfowitz's controversial nomination as World Bank president is overshadowing valedictory verdicts on James Wolfensohn's 10 years in the role.

Bear Stearns's young UK subprime lender has entered the RMBS market using an innovative offering circular that should position it well for future deals.

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What do the European Union's new rules on curbing pollution mean for utilities? The plans to cut carbon emissions over the next seven years to sub-1990 levels will hit the biggest polluters hardest. Utilities account for about a third of European carbon emissions.

Foreign banks are racing to enter the Serbian banking market, one of the few in eastern Europe that still has large assets up for sale and strong potential for growth. Austria's Raiffeisen has stolen a march on its rivals but Italian and Greek banks are eager to build up business.

Hungary's economy is growing well, with relatively low unemployment and high foreign direct investment. But the government budget deficit is running far above EU criteria and there are divided counsels on how to control it.

Panama's president, Martin Torrijos, came in for a nasty surprise when he took over the helm of central America's biggest debtor late last year. He inherited a hefty fiscal deficit of 5.2% of GDP that the outgoing government had maintained was half as big, and was met with street riots among workers suspicious that the new administration planned to privatize the state-run social security system. Panamanian debt sank sharply at the start of 2005 amid fears that the young government would not be up to the challenge of reforming the dollar-denominated economy, once seen as a safe haven credit in volatile Latin America. Panama's global 27 bond sold off almost 2.5% at the start of January and the paper fell to its support level of 105.00.

Manipulation of the stock prices of small, start-up companies can manifest itself in several ways. Genuine start-up companies are in need of investment, and illegal naked shorters can use their vulnerability and inexperience as a means of making money. Wes Christian, partner with law firm Christian, Smith & Jewell, says there tends to be two or three ways that these investors will loan a company money, and simultaneously short them out of existence using complicated financial arrangements – so-called toxic funding, or 'death-spiral financing'.

Growing liquidity derived from high oil prices, less restrictive regulation, a drive to privatization and a reduction in investment abroad have driven the Saudi Arabian stock market to new heights

Ukraine is enjoying a huge re-evaluation in the eyes of outsiders, thanks to its Orange Revolution. President Viktor Yushchenko has set out an ambitious and investor-friendly reform programme but it is not clear that the government is capable of implementing it.

Bob Diamond is on the verge of a sporting hat trick. The Barclays Capital CEO's run of success started last October when the Boston Red Sox beat the infamous Curse of the Bambino to win baseball's World Series. They had last won in 1918.

Germany's Pfandbrief issuers are getting ready for the new law that comes into effect in July. Now they, potential new issuers and an increasingly diverse investor base are focusing on the opportunities that the revised regulatory regime may provide. Will the new legislation help to hasten the internationalisation of the asset class?

Now enjoying the third year of a recovery that is clearing away the debris of the 2001 crisis, Turkey's bankers are hoping soon to complete the final important clean-up operation: resolving the on-again, off-again fate of the fourth-largest private bank, Yapi Kredi.

Definitions for: Naked short selling; Illegal naked short selling; Stock borrow programme; Fail to deliver; Margin account stock; Market maker; OTC Bulletin Board; Pink Sheets; DTCC; NSCC; Freiverkehr; Regulation SHO; Threshold Securities List; NASD Rule 3370.

With some of the largest and most liquid capital markets in Asia Pacific and yield-hungry local asset managers, Australia would seem a natural port of call for Asian companies. Yet until structural reforms are made and local perceptions about Asian risk change, the expectations gap will not be bridged. Australia will end up the loser.

Shareholders and executives in some of the US's smallest listed companies believe their share prices have been forced down by illegal naked shorting. This has led to a number of lawsuits, claiming unscrupulous behaviour by brokers and market-makers exploiting loopholes in the central clearing system. Those implicated dismiss the allegations as rubbish. What's going on?

The successful restructuring of energy company Medco shows what can be achieved in the byzantine and often murky world of Indonesian restructurings. With creditors all paid out and the family back in control, plans are afoot for a rapid expansion and an overseas listing.

Successful foreign involvement in Brazilian investment banking demands some sort of venture with one of the local firms that dominate the market. Banco Pactual is among the most successful of these and Goldman Sachs seems to have recognized this.

With the Russian state rolling back the liberalization of the economy – notably in its dealings with oil company Yukos – investment banks are faced with a dilemma. They must sometimes decide between defending the rights of private investors and forging and maintaining relations with the Kremlin in the hope of attracting current and future business. It's a tough choice.

Before 1992, David Gershon didn't know the difference between bonds and equities, so to have set up a company that revolutionized the pricing of currency options less than a decade later is no mean feat. Gershon left school with the dream of becoming a professor of physics and spent most of his twenties gaining a number of impressive academic accolades. His PhD was in superstring theory. "This theory was first developed in 1981. It gained popularity throughout the 1980s as the first theory that could unify all the forces in nature, which is why it is sometimes called the theory of everything," he says. "It's a beautiful idea but unfortunately to me it looked like it was reaching a dead end with its ambitious role to 'replace the need in God'. It had too many unknowns and ambiguities." While writing his thesis, Gershon completed an MBA and began increasingly to think about finance. Eventually, he decided to switch disciplines and joined the graduate programme of finance at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Very quickly he started to get offers to do consultancy work, one of which took him to the mortgages department of NationsBank. Soon after, he received job offers from Wall Street firms and he moved to New York in 1994. "At the time there was a fair amount of demand for people with experience in mathematics and physics," he says. Gershon then traded FX at Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital, covering emerging markets. He later transferred to Barclays' head office in London, where he was global head of FX options. In 2000, he left Barclays and set up SuperDerivatives. "SuperDerivatives' initial mission, which remains its aim today, was to help thousands of people already and potentially involved in options to obtain real market prices rather than just theoretical values," he says.