Two groups of financial institutions are reviving the idea of trading derivatives linked to UK real-estate prices, five years after the first attempt to do this ended in disaster.

It's not often you get a morality tale in the bond markets. But when an obscure line of postal bonds grabbed the attention of traders in London, the conflict of interest that haunts all investment banks came horribly alive. One man decided that his bank's relationship mattered more than short-term gain, and he gave his traders' profits back. Was this the action of a saint, or just good business sense? Steven Irvine reports.

The IFC's Minati Misra is not prone to giving the dealers on her MTN programme an easy time. With a reputation as one of the market's most sophisticated borrowers, she is far from passive. Steven Irvine spent two days by her desk in Washington listening as she charmed and cajoled her intermediaries.

Why did Daiwa's European fixed-income new-issue wheel fall off in 1996? In a record year for new-issue volumes and secondary bond trading, Daiwa Europe has plummeted like a stone in the league tables finishing 19th, compared with seventh position in 1995. Had it not been for a World Bank issue late in the year targeted into Japan, Daiwa might even have finished behind Nikko Europe which would have been seen as a disaster at Daiwa's HQ. "There would have been bodies floating all over Tokyo Bay," comments a former Daiwa trader in London.