Bank Atlas - Top 200

Three powerful and transforming currents swirling through wholesale financial services - banks' increased appetite for proprietary trading, the growth of hedge funds and the trend to outsourcing - flowed together at a compelling presentation by Deutsche Bank at Euromoney's annual forex forum at the London Hilton last month.

President of Mercer Oliver Wyman & Co

Kenichiro Shiozawa, the director of the capital markets division of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, tells Euromoney's Charles Olivier that JBIC paper is undervalued but that when conditions improve a euro issue will be considered.

Karlheinz Muhr is full of colourful ways to describe his business. He is chairman and founding partner of Volaris Advisors, which dubs itself an equity-options strategy firm. Essentially what it offers is the ability, as Muhr puts it, "to harvest the volatility of stocks which you already own".

Spain's savings banks have built a solid market share and reputation. And the new finance law looks set to strengthen their position yet further.

Source: www.breakingviews.com is Europe's leading financial commentary service

Hybrid capital in all forms is attractive to yield-hungry investors right now, offering sellers good terms even while the straight equity market is closed. But the leading issuers - financial institutions - are concerned about lack of regulatory and accounting clarity.

Harald Orneberg, a former banker at Salomon Smith Barney and founder of Orn Capital, is one of the new breed of hedge fund entrepreneurs. He has built his business from multiple hedge funds with different strategies and is winning over fans.

The successful privatizations of banks taken under the wing of the state after the 1997-98 crisis and well-received bonds have boosted investor sentiment about Indonesia.

Yet another name from the UK's merchant-banking past bites the dust. UBS is to ditch the Warburg name from its investment bank as part of a rebranding that also heralds the demise of all other extraneous suffixes.

Aberdeen Asset Management, the hard-hit UK fund manager, has sold its Guernsey-based exotic debt and emerging-market debt funds to the fund managers for an undisclosed sum. The fund is the only one in the UK to specialize in so-called pariah debt issued by countries such as Iraq and North Korea.

Euromoney's Chris Cockerill speaks to Suchart Jaovisidha, Thailand's new finance minister, about non-performing loans, competition from China, the impact of Sars on tourism earnings and the plan for a pan-Asian investment fund, the Asia Bond Fund

IFL is a new player with a bold mission: to become a full-service investment bank not a purveyor of niche products.

Deep underground in a secured bunker in western Pennsylvania, employees of a Carlyle Group portfolio company perform background checks on government and airlines employees, as well as on thousands of private-sector job applicants.