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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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

"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.

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 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

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).

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.

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.

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.

Retail banking is undergoing dramatic change. New delivery mechanisms such as the internet and aggressive new competitors such as supermarkets will eat into the easy profits previously enjoyed by retail banks. Can the big banks see off the threats? Rebecca Bream reports.

Bankers are a competitive bunch, though competing to give money away seems an unusual form of behaviour.

Brazil's investment banks are engaged in their own distribution build-up a mini-version of the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Salomon Smith Barney megamergers in the US. Banco Bozano Simonsen has purchased the retail bank Meridional in a privatization auction and Banco Pactual has bought Sistema, a Sao Paulo commercial bank which ran into trouble. Both banks say they are looking to make further purchases.

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

A few decades from now, a loan syndication desk will come up with a novel way of conducting its business: it will print and distribute documents on paper. Clients will be impressed with this innovative approach. They will point to improved efficiency, potential cost savings, as well as the exotic feel of paper on flesh. A few of the market's more aged participants will have a sense of déjà vu.

A year after Bank Austria's deal to take over Creditanstalt, Gerhard Randa has cut the acquisition down to size. No more treasury, no more stand-alone overseas banking. Rump Creditanstalt is a domestic bank that will live or die on somewhat hollow competition. As David Shirreff reports, it's all rather a comedown for this once very blue-blooded bank.