Monitoring thousands of accounts payable and receivable flowing daily through myriad bank accounts, while minimizing short-term borrowing costs and maximizing returns on investment of liquidity, is a huge challenge for corporate treasurers. They value highly banks that do this well. But Euromoney's poll shows few banks excel.

Unilever is breaking new ground by taking its former fund manager, Mercury, to court in a bid to recover alleged lost earnings. The fund management world is closely watching events as the outcome of the case could have a profound effect on the way that the business operates in the future.

Within days of the EC unveiling proposed conditions on the merger of SEB and Swedbank, the banks called the marriage off. Had Brussels scuppered a sound deal, or were the fainthearted suitors getting cold feet anyway? The row hinges on the commission’s curious focus on the dominance the new combine would have boasted in its modest domestic market, not the European market as a whole. Critics argue this discriminates against smaller EU states and will curtail cross-border bank mergers.

Akbank, emerging on top of Turkey's banking crisis, has embarked on a plan to professionalize its management. As it outgrows its family origins, Atbank prepares itself for a joint venture.

Deal: Merger of technology platformsStructure: MTS buys 15% stake in CoredealResult: New corporate bond structure – CoredealMTS

When a man is down, bankers rarely hesitate to stick in the knife. So the moment Bill Loomis was sacked as Lazard's chief executive by Michel David-Weill out came the stilettos.

Oyak, the armed forces pension fund, is one of Turkey's largest conglomerates and has joint ventures in multinationals such as Renault, Axa, Elf and Goodyear. But most people do not know of its military origins. Now, Oyak seeks to come into the open, emerging among the top five companies in Turkey.

For decades Mediobanca had an unchallenged grip on Italian investment banking. Then the loss of a key deal-maker with unrivalled contacts, followed by the death of its illustrious founder, opened up major deals to foreign rivals and took the shine off its reputation. Yet the wound to it’s pride may not be terminal. With a new generation of bankers, Mediobanca’s name still commands a lot of respect in Milan. Even so, its days of independence may be numbered.

Itera began life as little more than a bill collector for Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas monopoly. Many think its real purpose was simply to siphon cash out of Gazprom and into management's pockets. Now Itera plans to float on the German stock exchange. Will investors be tempted? Probably not, but that is not the point of the IPO.

On September 11 in Indonesia, the eyes of the financial community were focused on the country's parliament. Several senior economic ministers, backed up by visiting officials from the IMF, were locked in a battle with politicians over the sale of a majority shareholding in the government-controlled Bank Central Asia.

Leonard Licht and Mercury Asset Management retained an aura of invincibility in the 1980s and '90s. Even after Merrill Lynch bought Mercury, Licht's approach to UK fund management lingers.

The success of Chase’s past merger ventures seemed to bode well for its link-up with JP Morgan. But those deals of the early 1990s had brought together commercial banks and didn’t have to reckon with integrating culturally alien investment bankers. On the execution front, the merger has proved messy, with blood-letting among JP Morganites in New York being matched by Chase losses in Europe. Beyond this – in itself enough to worry shareholders – there are concerns that underperforming JP Morgan was not the ideal medium for Chase’s equity market aspirations and that the deal was ill-timed, damaging Chase’s well-deserved reputation for clever risk-management skills in choppy markets.

Author: Philip Eade