Issuer: Ballarpur Industries Amount: Rs1.5 billion Launched: February 2001 Lead manager: DSP Merrill Lynch

For the first time in almost a decade Latin America’s faithful companion – a strong US economy – will be absent this year. It’s an eventuality that the finance ministers and central bank governors of Latin America have been worrying about for years. They have fretted over how their economies will respond to reduced demand from American importers and how their finances might be disrupted by collapsing confidence and increased risk-aversion in the US. Yet with America’s astonishing growth finally appearing to falter, private-sector capital has flowed abundantly since the start of 2001. Perhaps investors into the region are just taking a short-term view on US interest rates. Political risks remain the medium-term worry.

Executives at Perbadanan Usahawan Nasional (PUNB) - Malaysia's National Entrepreneur Corporation - appear to have taken their remit rather too literally.

The news coming out of Japan has for a long time been wholly discouraging. Its economy has been on the operating table for the best part of 10 years. The government, unsure, unable or unwilling to make use of the scalpel, resorts to placing band-aids over gaping wounds. The cauterizing effect of injecting trillions of yen into the ailing system is also wearing off. Intermittent signs of recovery often prove no more than false dawns. And the country is running out of its self-prescribed medicine. But there are going to be some winners – quite possibly the foreign investment banks. As companies take it on themselves to restructure, or are forced to, those familiar vultures are circling overhead.

Berlin has not quite finished growing together, though it's well on the way to being rebuilt, with the near-completion of the Potsdamer Platz project.

Almost four years after its merger with Dean Witter, Morgan Stanley's new-look asset management division is finally taking shape under Mitchell Merin. Bringing the cultures of disparate investment houses under one roof has involved asking headstrong individuals to embrace a team ethic. The new beast may have the potential to achieve its aim of being the world's number one fund manager in all asset classes. Even Europe and Asia, which have so far resisted its advances, could yet succumb. However careful jockeyship will be required to keep star managers happy and the charge on course. Later this year the Morgan Stanley name will oust Dean Witter yet it is Dean Witter alumni who hold the key positions, both in the investment division and in the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter group at large where internal divisions have started to surface. Merin and his team talk exclusively to Julian Marshall

Argentina is now number eight in a quarter-trillion dollar stream of rescue packages to bolster the credit of threatened emerging economies. Mexico was the first in 1995, recipient of what was supposed to be a one-time $50 billion ransom for world stability. But that failed to factor in the next round of play. Instead, crises have impacted more often and with greater force and will continue to do so as past example teaches the markets that speculation is protected by a G7 guarantee. Adam Lerrick proposes that the private sector should provide the first line of defence with standby financing subsidized by the IMF as a global public good

Participants in Chunghwa Telecom's on-off American depositary receipt (ADR) issue are playing a game of bluff and double bluff as they amass support for a dignified climbdown on the deal's pricing stalemate.

The new Bondbook trading platform, which was designed with ease of use in mind, is more of a fixed-income initiative than a technological one.

After trying to be in four places at once, Morgan Stanley’s chief investment officer, Joseph McAlinden, is looking forward to moving to a permanent base, on the Avenue of the Americas.

The Editor

In the first two months of this year there has been a dramatic reconfiguration of market variables in the US, including interest rates, credit spreads and the yield curve. Both a result of and contributing to these seismic shifts in the financial landscape has been business completed by mortgage portfolios to hedge negative convexity. Dealers have been rocked on their feet by the scale of volatility buying, and the fear that if rates back up, the mortgage holders will unwind the positions and sell convexity, making any general market sell-off much more severe than would otherwise be the case.

Head of investment banking for Merrill Lynch Europe, Middle East & Africa

Global head of primary capital markets, Barclays Capital

Co-head of global debt primary markets, Nomura