World Bank president James Wolfensohn believes the Bank is becoming a more caring place, closer to the client it's trying to serve. One advanced management course includes a taste of poverty: living a week in a slum or village. Social aspects must match financial and macro concerns, he tells James Smalhout

Croatia has too many banks and most of them are poorly run. Bad debts are on the rise. Related lending has been widespread. The government has taken some banks under its wing and hopes to rehabilitate and privatize them. Yet fundamental reform of the sector is coming too slowly and in insufficient doses. Alex Mathias reports.

Last month an earthquake brought Turkey's economy to a temporary standstill. It was already in the throes of a recession. Now it's time to rebuild, take advantage of extra sympathy from the IMF and international capital markets, and perhaps revitalize and reform the country in a way that wasn't politically possible before August 17. Metin Munir reports.

The dynamics of the US equities market are such that the old system cannot last much longer without fundamental change. Internet trading, the recent appearance of electronic commissions networks, forthcoming shorter settlement times and decimalization of stock quotes are all turning the screw. Antony Currie reports.

All you need to make good money in Brazil is a banking licence, a few retail outlets and faith that your biggest customer will keep up payments. You don't need to worry too much about credit analysis, operating efficiency or branding. Risk-management skills may help you make even more money, but if you don't have them, relax, you should still come out ahead. Michael Peterson reports

Elections have a nasty habit of destabilizing Latin America's fragile financial markets. The latest election-inspired jolt came in July when Eduardo Duhalde, Peronist party candidate for Argentina's presidency, suggested that the country might not need to pay back all its debts. The impact was felt throughout Latin America. Spreads on bonds widened, stock markets fell and currencies weakened. While some Latin issuers have taken advantage of brief windows of opportunity to sell bonds and equities this year, many are struggling to raise finance, while much of the region heads into economic downturn. Michael Peterson reports

Ireland has transformed its economy in recent years, luring multinational companies by offering low taxes and well-educated labour. Its participation in European economic and monetary union has also been an attraction. The economy has boomed. Ireland is running budget surpluses and paying down its debt out of privatization proceeds. But being a small nation in euroland also brings difficulties, like wholly inappropriate interest rates. The Irish economic miracle could be heading for disaster -- extraordinary rates of growth could well lead on to rampant inflation. Nick Kochan reports

In the past six months international investors have differentiated central and eastern European countries they once grouped together. Economic performance and market development have varied widely, partly reflecting how badly each country was hit by the Russian crisis. The gap between the richest and poorest is growing, and there is increasing polarization between the first wave of applicants to the EU (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia), the second (Bulgaria, Romania, Slovak Republic, Lithuania, Latvia), and the former Soviet republics. Rebecca Bream reports on Poland, a leader in attracting foreign interest.

Eisuke Sakikabara, alias Mr Yen, retired last month as Japan's vice finance minister for international affairs. A forthright bureaucrat who kept the market on its toes with his timely comments, his career path was not typical of MoF officials and included a period in academia. A fluent English-speaker, he talked to Steven Irvine shortly after he stepped down. The only thing he wouldn't discuss was the way the yen was heading - something of a paradox given that the currency was formerly his favourite subject.

James Wolfensohn is about to reach a milestone. His five-year term at the helm of the World Bank is coming to an end. US president Bill Clinton will shortly decide whether to reappoint him. James Smalhout examines the record.

The credibility of the UAE's stock market continues to be affected by the lack of a settlement, clearing and custody system - leaving it highly unregulated, devoid of transparency and subject to manipulation. But, Nigel Dudley reports, a regulatory system now seems on the way

ARAB 100: Methodology

As Daewoo, once symbolic of the strength of new Korea, is forced into dismemberment because of crippling debt, the government hopes the demise of the second largest of Korea's chaebols will spur others to restructure to avoid a similar fate. However, there is a worry that economic recovery has taken some of the pressure off chaebol chiefs. Steven Irvine reports

A consolidation wave has broken over the Arab banks. In Bahrain, Gulf International Bank and Saudi International have created a new giant. In Saudi Arabia, Saudi American Bank and United Saudi Bank merged. Years of low oil prices and weak economies are the spur, though banks are still making profits. Commentary by Andrew Beikos and Elena Antoniou

When former paratrooper and failed coup leader Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in December promising to do whatever was necessary to improve the lot of the bulk of the population, the country's bankers weren't sure what kind of treatment they could expect. They are beginning to find out.

"Unreal city," wrote TS Eliot about London in his 1922 poem The Wasteland. If London induced feelings of bewilderment in Eliot one struggles to imagine what he might have thought about Washington DC. Between M Street in Georgetown and Independence Avenue on Capitol Hill are a couple of square miles into which many of the world's most rarefied institutions are concentrated. Here decisions are taken with resounding affects both across the US and the world. Yet the institutions are cocooned from the actualities over which they preside. There is an air of unreality about majestic Washington.

In the run-up to the European single currency there were expectations of major political changes that might take place after monetary union leading to more decentralized funding, with local authorities and regions issuing more and sovereigns less. Generally in the eurozone this change has been slow in coming. Spain is a key test case. Any significant increase in debt issuance by local authorities may hinge on political horse-trading between the central government and the "fast-track" autonomous regions.

by David Roche

Equities might enjoy all the glory at the moment but watch out for credit. This techno-laggard of the financial markets is set for an electronic great leap forward. If proof were needed - even the venerable CBOT has been showing interest. Antony Currie logs on.

The figures are alarming. A worldwide survey by Standard & Poor's shows that 55 rated companies failed in the first half of 1999, defaulting on total debts of $20.5 billion. That easily exceeds the 37 failures and $8.3 billion in defaulted debts in the second half of 1998, when the rising default trend began. What's worrying is that, while common sense and historical data teach that the level and volatility of default rates rises in a recession, the US is in anything but that.

Bankers tossed out of jobs in last year's emerging markets crisis should now be brushing off their CVs. Quietly and cautiously banks are rebuilding their emerging markets teams - primarily in Asian and Latin American equities - in the hope that this year's momentum in the asset class will be sustained. ING Barings which was heavily criticized for radically downsizing a tip-top team is leading the way back.

Issuer: EuroCredit CDO 1

Banks, like priests before them, have survived in part because of their monopoly of information and access. The internet is changing all that. As Steven Irvine argues, the data and choices that can be accessed with a mouse click must mean the death of banks as we know them.

Meet the new breed of Asian banker - the ones who survived the crisis and are now able to put their hard-learned lessons into practice. They are leading the way into a new era of openness and transparency in Asia.

The great and the good have come up with a seven-point plan to stave off financial crises and benefit the developing world. Are they building castles in the air or laying the basis of a new financial architecture? James Smalhout reports

Emerging market bond investors have up to now been extraordinarily ill-served by the index compilers. Only JP Morgan has made a concerted effort to provide a benchmark index to track emerging market debt, and its Emerging Market Bond Index (EMBI) and EMBI+ have as a result become the market standards.

World Bank guarantees are a new way to help crisis-hit countries back into the private capital markets. But the Bank still wants to lend money. James Smalhout reports

Ten years after the Japanese stock market suffered its dramatic plunge, following a decade in which the Japanese economic model - with its corporate cross-shareholdings, scandal-ridden financial sector, and notorious convoy system which prevents well-managed companies from outperforming the bad - has been pilloried, Japanese equity markets are suddenly soaring.

As the risk of a round of sovereign bond rescheduling looms, bondholders are dusting off the documentation to see what it says. By Christopher Stoakes

Forget about the euro. Forget about Y2K. These are no more than simple exercises in crisis management. E-commerce is what you should be preparing for: get the power of the internet around you. It is a power that is revolutionizing equities trading, a power likely to spread into core investment banking, in the process stripping away the inefficiencies previously integral to the financial system. Established market leaders already face an array of upstart competitors. There are new banks, new trading systems. Pricing and research are the main targets. All-comers now have access to liquidity. Huge amounts of research are freely available. Ma, Pa and the Belgian dentist can pile in there with the best of them. All under the cloak of anonymity. As a senior investment banker puts it: "This business used to be a pitched gun-battle. It could get messy but you knew who the opponents were. Not any more. It feels as if we're being shot at from every direction." Heed his words but don't delay in joining the fray. Three years will be too late. E-commerce is the power of the future. But it's here now. Antony Currie goes behind the wires to report from the new frontier.