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.

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.

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.

"Its a lose-lose situation," says an employee at capital-market brokers Euro Brokers when asked about former colleague Cindy Buggins. "If I say something good, I'm helping competitors. If it's bad it looks like sour grapes."

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.

Having spent his entire career at Smith Barney, Steven Black is no stranger to mergers and the blood on the floor they create. He cut his teeth on the 1992 merger of Shearson with Smith Barney, where he headed capital markets. In that position, after the merger, he took the axe to the fixed-income division.