Investors in Japan's privatized companies are getting worried about the government's attitude towards its former charges. Less than two years after thrashing out an agreement with a number of former state-owned companies about the extent of their pension liabilities, the government has issued a demand for a top-up payment. Several railway companies some already privatized, others slated for privatization have been asked to cough up ¥360 billion ($2.8 billion) by accepting an increase in their pre-privatization era pension obligations.

Issuer: Optimum Finance

Developers used to put up offices for banks on a speculative basis. Now banks' requirements have become too specialized for this to work. In the late 1990s building boom in London, the trend is for the major houses to design their own. Philip Eade reports on the many projects underway.

"I went into my boss's office to ask if I could have a new computer. He said 'no and, by the way, you've been made redundant'." This was the rather typical experience of a junior equity analyst at Jardine Fleming in the new Hong Kong.

You could never get them together in one room at the same time. But, using the wonders of technology, Euromoney did the next best thing. We collected the views of seven top European bank chairmen and CEOs on the challenges facing the banking industry, and synthesized them into a virtual roundtable. Garry Evans moderated the discussion.

Weak and unreliable may be their image ­ but the best emerging-market banks are among the most robust in the world. Faced with hyperinflation, political instability and crippling credit crunches, they need to be tough to survive. Along the way they have turned into centres of excellence. Euromoney picked banks from widely differing regions to illustrate this winning streak. They are Brazil's Itau, Poland's Handlowy, Taiwan's Shanghai & Commercial Savings Bank, the UAE's Mashreq, South Africa's Investec and Ghana's Social Security Bank.

The financial world will feel better now Korea has got most of its foreign debts rolled over. The bankers who lent Korea the money in the first place declare they have solved the Korean crisis a mere momentary liquidity squeeze and the Asian crisis along with it. The world may believe them for a short while (though it's ironic it should grant credibility to bankers it was their stupidity that let the crisis happen).

The secretive world of private international banking is set to change. Regulatory reform may be slow but it is coming. By Christopher Stoakes.

Deal: Buy-out of IPC

It was fun while it lasted but National Bank of Poland's unique approach to monetary control has been knocked on the head. Following this year's introduction of a new banking law, the central bank, headed by tough-minded Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, will no longer be able to take retail deposits.

European banks are going to get much bigger - much bigger. In the quest for a knock-out market capitalization, Europe's bank leaders are ready to tie the knot with the unlikeliest of partners. The coming wave of mergers involving commercial banks will put the recent consolidation of investment banking in the shade. By Peter Lee.

It has all the makings of a tax haven. It's somewhere people tend to go only on holiday, if at all; it has a population of under a million, and a capital city with just 25,000 inhabitants; it's stable, with a median family income in 1989 of over $28,000. It even has snow-capped mountains.

In a time of fierce competition partly prompted by technological change, commercial banks are struggling hard to make decent margins from traditional business. Diversification into investment banking and derivatives trading has led to as many failures as successes. Suzanne Miller reports on alternative views on how the banks might turn an honest penny.

France has long maintained a proprietorial attitude towards its national treasures, including both financial institutions and the French language. But now, though the Académie Française rejects the use of such imported terms, corporate governance and shareholder value are becoming common currency. Some banks are even putting the ideas into practice. Tess Read reports.

Not a good start to the year for investment banks in eastern Europe. The advisory role for the $1 billion sell-off of most of Bulgaria's petrochemicals industry was up for grabs.

There can be few industries that have changed as much this decade as banking. And there will be few that will change as much over the next decade.

Salaries and bonuses paid to workers in the City of London are unfair and unjustified. At least according to the majority present at the Futures and Options Association's third City debate, held last month.

It's boom time in Europe's private-equity business. But what if your client is so far behind the times that the term leveraged buy-out leaves a blank look on his face and he thinks high-yield bonds are a reference to 007's success rate with the ladies?

BankAmerica, Bankers Trust and NationsBank, each bought a specialist West Coast equity house last year. Integration proceeds apace with the predicted clash of cultures. Cross-selling of products is a controversial issue as are compensation systems. Even office environments are a total contrast. Says one investment banker: "Nothing has really changed here. That's the way people like it." It may be 10 years before we can judge these mergers' success or failure. By Michelle Celarier.

Sir,

You thought banking was about money, markets and return on risk-adjusted assets. Not in the 21st century. The Banque Imaginaire exists because it had to be invented. It thrives on its wits, in the land of Cats and fat tails. David Shirreff reports.

Grand Hyatt Hotel,

It's every risk manager's worst nightmare. One trader amasses enough losses to bring the bank down, as Nick Leeson did with Barings, or forces a wholesale retrenchment, as happened at NatWest Markets following the discovery of Kyriacos Papouis's mispricings.

Issuer: investment banks

When president Ernesto Zedillo appointed his finance secretary, Guillermo Ortiz, to head the central bank for the next six years, tongues wagged. In Mexico, political pundits speculated endlessly about the reasons Zedillo would overlook the most obvious choice for the position, the eminently qualified central bank vice governor Francisco Gill Diaz, and sacrifice the most vital member of his cabinet.

Sinking under bad debts, stung by criticism of their poor profitability and shocked by the falling prestige of the ministry of finance, Japanese banks are talking about changing their way of doing things. But why should bankers risk damaging their careers, upsetting their customers ­ who are also their biggest shareholders ­ and putting their fellow citizens out of work by adopting western practices? One western analyst says if he was in charge of a big Japanese bank he wouldn't care about making a decent return on equity, so why should they? Steven Irvine reports.

First he sat in the back seat, then he had his foot on the brake, now he's got one hand on the steering wheel! Is there no end to the risk manager's advancement into every aspect of risk-taking in a financial firm? Next he'll be right there in the driving seat, with traders, salesmen, corporate financiers and chief financial officers doing his bidding. So, is the risk manager turning into something else? By David Shirreff

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.

Akira Watanabe was the pioneer of derivatives in Japan and founded many of Mitsubishi's investment-banking activities. Now he aims to double the size of Tokyo-Mitsubishi International within the next three years and challenge Nomura International's supremacy among Japan's global investment banks.

Corporate-finance teams are preparing for some late nights in Bangkok as they try to sort out the mess surrounding Thailand's corporate Eurobond issuers. In a movement akin to plate spinning, bankers are working on delicate negotiations over existing defaults while keeping an eye out for the next hapless issuer about to hit the floor.