Both BNP Paribas and Barclays Capital are beefing up their push into the highly competitive US fixed-income markets by setting up new regional offices there to get closer to key institutional clients. Barclays Capital CEO Bob Diamond opened his bank's new institutional sales office in Boston at the beginning of last month and BNP Paribas set up a fixed-income institutional sales desk in San Francisco at the end of June.

All the international businesses of Merrill Lynch's GPC group made losses in 2000-02 but the Japanese business suffered most. Now, after a restructuring, and a shift in focus towards high-net-worth individuals, the business is back on track and in profit.

Fund managers are increasingly pessimistic about global growth expectations, inflation is still a concern and only bullishness on Japan bucks the trend, according to Merrill Lynch?s latest research.

The UK's financial regulator will take a dim view of companies that respond in a legalistic way to its investigations, threatening exemplary sanctions against those that don't cooperate fully.

It was supposed be a model merger and the first significant tie-up outside the energy sector as Russian companies finally get serious about taking on industrial companies abroad. But the shareholders of heavy equipment producer OMZ left their prospective bride Power Machines waiting at the altar when they failed to show up to its AGM.

The Federal Republic of Germany?s securitization of e5 billion of Russian Federation Paris Club debt is a landmark transaction.

For those who couldn't make the Euromoney Awards for Excellence dinner on July 15, the hot ticket was Deutsche Bank's global derivatives conference in Barcelona. After dinner at the grand Finca Mas Solers in the hills above the the nearby resort of Sitges, Deutsche executives and their clients were treated to a private performance from diminutive Australian diva Kylie Minogue.

Euromoney's first financial technology users' survey polled the market to find the software companies that had hit the heights expected of them by an ever more demanding financial services industry. As Jonathan Turton, Erica Mold and Liz Mundy discovered, it's an industry that has never been afraid to get its programming feet wet, but the stakes are getting higher as compliance demands on financial institutions increase.

RBC has gone golf mad. As homage to the winner of the Masters Tournament 2003, Canadian-born Mike Weir, RBC Royal Bank has launched a credit card in his name. The RBC Mike Weir Visa Card offers clients golfing-related rewards for points. Cardholders can use their points, for example, towards green fees or receive offers from some of Canada?s top golf courses. RBC Royal has also just announced that cardholders can enter a contest to win a round of golf with Weir himself at his home course of Taboo in Ontario. ?I?m glad to join with RBC in a venture that rewards golf devotees,? says Weir, who is currently on the PGA Tour, but the pressure is on. RBC has promised that cardholders will be awarded extra reward points for every victory Weir clocks up. Cardholders have already nabbed themselves 500 points for Weir?s win at the Nissan Open in February. And if he wins one of the majors or the Bell Canadian Open in September, cardholders will receive a bonus 1,000 points. They will have to cross their fingers, though. Weir tied a mere ninth at the British Open in July. Devoted fans are confident, however, that he?ll do better on home ground in September.

Since Asia's 1997 financial crisis, most Thai financial businesses have been forced to focus on recovery and restructuring. But Asset Plus Securities came through unscathed. Now called Asia Plus Securities, the firm shows what might lie ahead for other Thai financial firms if they can get their houses in order.

Baillie Gifford exemplifies the traditional image of the cautious but successful Scottish investment manager. But if it wants to leap up to the big league, the partnership might have to consider changes to its structure.

The Prague Stock Exchange, which had been more or less comatose for years, sprang into life thanks to the $211 million IPO from generic drugs maker Zentiva. It was the first IPO on the exchange for a decade.

Merrill Lynch (Bank) Suisse is the largest of Merrill's onshore international businesses, with $11.16 billion assets under management. Regarded as separate from the GPC business, the Swiss bank has been re-establishing links with it over the past two years in a bid to boost business. "While the Swiss bank wasn't making a loss, assets had settled to about $9 billion and stayed there," says Nick Stonestreet, who became CEO of the Swiss bank in July last year. "There were many things that needed addressing, such as service quality, but the most important move in the last year has been a reconnection to Merrill Lynch GPC. Before that we tended to stand alone."