Conversation in Kazkakhstan in recent months has centred on one topic: oil. What appears to be a major new find has excited locals, multinationals operating in the energy sector and buyers of an oversubscribed sovereign Eurobond. The prospect of this impoverished country, where the average wage is barely $100 a month, becoming the next Kuwait has also enabled the nation teasingly to play prospective bride to both the West and Russia. Ted Kim reports

Remember how the internet was going to put securities firms out of business? It isn’t happening yet. Never before have investment banks made so much money from international capital markets. Volumes are rising across all categories. Underwriting fees are holding steady. And lucrative areas such as capital instruments, leveraged finance and securitization are bursting into life. Meanwhile, the equity markets have been a thrill-a-minute roller-coaster ride. But times aren’t as good for issuers and investors. As prices slide, bond and equity buyers alike have lost money. And issuers have had to jump through hoops to complete deals in crowded and volatile markets. Michael Peterson reports

Taiwan avoided the excesses of Asian equity market euphoria last year and has escaped the worst of the stock market corrections in 2000. Some imaginative plays have helped it to the top of the Asian primary equity market this year. But even now concerns about a slowing economy, political uncertainty and a fragile banking system have many analysts believing the market has peaked for Taiwan issuers. Gill Baker reports

A run on Romania’s biggest bank was stopped in its tracks. The episode highlights nervousness in the system as banks are being readied for sale. Some on the inside say the situation’s not so bad as it looks and that the supervisors are getting tougher. But foreigners are still asking a host of questions, as Erik D’Amato reports.

To date, most Arab countries have been insulated from outside pressure due to highly protected markets and huge oil reserves. But foreign competition is set to increase, especially for markets joining the World Trade Organization. The biggest banks in small countries will have to look outside their domestic markets for growth, either through acquisitions or alliances. Darren Stubing reports

Last month Freddie Mac did something that solid, dependable US agencies are not supposed to do: it took a gamble. It announced that it would start borrowing large amounts in euros.

Washington wags used to quip that former IMF managing director Michel Camdessus wanted to be “the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral”. They had a point. Camdessus put the Fund on an ambitious course to be many things to many people during his 13-year tenure. That ended in February and today his successor Horst Köhler is getting back to core principles. He says he wants a leaner, meaner IMF. Now he has to deliver. James Smalhout reports

War, famine, AIDS, corruption: the news out of Africa is always bad. Yet a handful of international banks and investors say that their African operations are hugely profitable and the rest of the world is overlooking wonderful opportunities. A number of sub-Saharan countries are throwing off their reputations for economic mismanagement, liberalizing their markets and promoting the private sector. Chris Cockerill reports

Two years ago the Korean banking sector was in crisis. Foreign banks were nervous of making acquisitions. Today, although total banking-sector losses are still high, a core of mid-sized profitable banks has emerged. None, though, is large enough to prosper in the long term and the race is on to find complementary partners in an increasingly competitive market. Simon Brady reports

The last of Poland's large commercial banks to be privatized could prove to be the most troublesome.

Chief executive, BondClick

When an institution declares that under no circumstances will it reform you can be sure it faces a rocky future. The idea that any economic player, public or private, can carry on acting in the same old way, regardless of external changes, strikes most people as absurd. Yet this is what the Paris Club believes. Events will surely force it to shape up or wind up.

The ebb and Flow of the Asian debt and equity markets in the past three years has inevitably brought upheavals in investment banking in the region, and it looks as if there are more to come. Avinder Bindra, Citibank's outgoing head of global loan products of Asia, Japan and Australia, foresees continued consolidation among banks, with the number of loan arrangers already diminishing because of mergers involving Chase and Chemical, Deutsche Bank and Citibank. Twenty years ago there were 20 loan arrangers on the scene, now there are eight or 10 globally. There are tentative signs of the Japanese banks coming back into the Asian market and rebuilding assets. "Competition is there for banking lending that would not have been the case a year ago," says David Russell, executive director for debt capital markets at Nomura International in Hong Kong.

For decades America ran huge budget deficits, only balancing the books in the last two years of the most astonishing economic boom on record. Now the two presidential candidates are rubbing their hands at the prospect of spending huge projected surpluses. They should be planning to meet the country’s real long-term financial challenges, rather than frittering the bounty away in popular tax cuts and spending. The age of sound economic leadership in the US may be about to come to an end. Antony Currie reports

Poland suffered a dramatic bank collapse earlier this year and non-performing loans are building up on the balance sheets of many survivors. But there’s little need to panic. Poland has sold its banking system to foreign entrants attracted by the country’s growth potential. Lots of Poles don’t like what has happened. But it may be the model for the rest of the region. Ronan Lyons reports

Other central bank governors may lead a sedate life, contemplating the economy through half open eyes and jumping into action once or twice a year to notch the prime rate up or down by 25 basis points before they go back to watching the fiscal grass grow. Not Turkey’s Gazi Ercel. Metin Munir reports.

Former director, research & statistics division, US Federal Reserve

When hurricane Mitch washed away the bridges, houses and crops of Honduras two years ago, many of its banks remained open and the staff at the finance ministry came into work. The authorities wanted to give a message: business as usual. The economy survived the devastation and recovery is now under way. But Honduras had to seek help from the multilaterals and the Paris Club. And that comes at a price, reports Nick Kochan