Turkish inspectors have discovered that the governmental abuse of the state banks continues and has remained unpunished.

The reform of Russia’s electricity sector is going faster than that of other utilities. UES chief executive Anatoly Chubais talked to Ben Aris about the proposals and the timetable

Strong-arm tactics haven’t entirely disappeared from Russia’s industrial consolidation process but the most successful companies are increasingly ploughing ahead by using gentler methods.

Dubai prepares for the IMF/World Bank meetings in 2003 by building five-star hotels, new roads and upgrading the transport system.

Most of the prize assets have been snapped up as bank privatization draws to an end in Europe’s emerging markets. Those banks that remain on offer are getting more pricey. But impending European Union accession for several countries means this is still an appealing market and is driving strategic change among both veteran players and big-spending newcomers.

Russian bonds are looking much safer than equities, offering good growth potential while still guaranteeing favourable yields. Once again, investors have their eyes on bonds.

Russia’s stock market has ended the first half of the year as the third best performing market in the world.

RZB, Austria’s largest private banking group, has been in the race for market share in central and eastern Europe from the beginning. Now, with so many western rivals, RZB looks to new ground in a pair of Bosnian start-ups.

When international rating agencies announced a negative outlook on India's sovereign rating in early August, the equity and bond markets barely reacted.

The aura of calm efficiency surrounding the new Indonesian administration of president Megawati Soekarnoputri has come as a relief to most Indonesians. After nearly four years of riots, coup rumours, unpredictable policymaking and political infighting, a rest is as good as a holiday.

The IMF has begun to stress prevention of crises rather than their cure and the new US administration agrees. But that raises numerous imponderables. Should the stress of prevention be on incentives to countries to behave responsibly or on building sound international financial architecture? And if the goal is to seek out better ways of forecasting impending crisis, does the IMF have the legitimacy to release market-moving information of this sort?

General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's head of state, talks about his country's economic programme, the Afghan Taliban and Islamic fundamentalism.

The number and variety of regional and municipal issuers tapping the international markets continues to grow steadily. Central governments across the Americas, Americasand emerging markets want to devolve financial responsibility. The degree of sovereign support varies.

The swing of the political pendulum in the US has had an equal and opposite reaction in Europe. In the 1990s, under the post-cold war order of transatlantic relations, Bill Clinton's centre-left US administration promoted its own brand of caring capitalism. Inflation was banished, the world economy grew strongly and financial markets soared.

Many bankers Euromoney has spoken to are fearful that anti-capitalist and anti-globalization protesters will severely disrupt this year's IMF/World Bank meetings - and some even refuse to discuss the issue on the record because they don't want to give the protesters the oxygen of publicity.

David Malpass, chief international economist at Bear Stearns, in a speech last month to the National Economists Club in Washington outlines the view that the world economy is entering a long, "saucer-shaped" slowdown. The nub of the problem is deflation, reckons Malpass. The flip side of the greenback's repeated 10% year-on-year gains is a drop in commodity prices of roughly the same amount. That's going to result in hard knocks for many economies.

A law that was passed virtually unnoticed will come into effect this month and has prompted many strategic and financial investors to question whether any investment in Korea’s financial sector is wise.

Société Générale paid Eu1.2 billion for 60% of Komercni Banka as it moved into the Czech Republic in June. The move was criticized as too risky. Now, it appears that it was right on target.

Russia’s vast utilities are gravely afflicted. In desperate need of investment to rebuild worn-out plant and distribution networks, they are also drained of income because of uneconomic pricing and persistent corruption. Ben Aris reports on the progress of restructuring

The Korean government wants to sell Seoul Bank to a blue-chip foreign strategic investor. But the likes of HSBC aren’t interested. So how far should the government compromise and maybe encourage a private-equity fund? The problem is that in the run-up to an election, the government is hemmed in by the favourable deal it struck with Newbridge, which was widely ridiculed by the local media.

Under James Wolfensohn the World Bank has beaten off influential enemies through polished public relations, but there are still widespread doubts about the effectiveness of Bank policies. Projects continue to fail and adjustment lending has in many cases been granted without proper safeguards. Bank insiders claim that programmes are increasingly effective but critics point to the weakness of Bank models for measuring success.

In an economic downturn, law firms specializing in financial business can ease the pain by establishing relations with their clients that are not strictly based on individual deals. The clients may also benefit.

A small group of western-minded business leaders have banded together to lobby for a Russia free from robber barons and fit for their children by the year 2015.

On August 13, the two-year versus 30-year US treasury yield curve gapped out to a seven-year high of 184 basis points. The two-year treasury was trading at its lowest ever yield in the 25 years since the two-year security was first introduced, and three-month Libor was even lower at 3.57%. Moreover, with the US economy showing no signs of recovery, short-end rates seem set to move even tighter. The extraordinary steepness of the US yield curve has provided mouthwatering swap opportunities for corporates that would not normally consider conversion of fixed-rate liabilities to floating rate. The greater than normal swap business has also put added downward pressure on swap spreads.

The UAE’s capital markets have been neglected by the federation’s own high-net-worth individuals while foreign investors have been excluded from many sectors. However, the rich are likely to invest more at home in the wake of market volatility elsewhere and foreigners may also be attracted by such deals as Emirates Airlines’ bond. But much remains to be done to develop local markets.

Euromoney's September edition had already gone to press when news broke of the horriffc terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The sheer scale of the destruction and loss of life numbs the mind, making rational analysis almost impossible. Financial markets consist of nothing more than men and women buying and selling. In the immediate aftermath few could turn their minds to anything so mundane as dealing or stock tipping. It's likely that every reader of Euromoney will have known people who worked in the World Trade Centre and it is with those unfortunate individuals that most people's thoughts now lie.

The February currency crisis has left Turkish banks bereft of capital. Disciplines imposed after the December 1999 IMF stand-by agreement mean that they are unable to replenish their reserves in the time-honoured way – by lending to the government. Underlying the sector’s particular problems – the only answer to which seems to lie in consolidation and foreign investment – is a generalized economic quagmire in which flounders a discredited political elite. There is little optimism to be found among those in the know in Turkey and the most pessimistic predict that a third crisis is just around the corner.

Hong Kong is facing a crisis - how to fund an increasing budget deficit at a time of almost unprecedented economic downturn.

President Putin’s has pushed through a swathe of reforming laws, spearheading his drive to liberalization. But implementation will not be easy. Nor can it be assumed that the liberals will stay in the ascendancy. Business oligarchs and the conservatives are asserting themselves as Putin struggles to pick a way through conflicting interests.

The Paris Club of official bilateral creditors is promoting the view that holders of sovereign bonds should take their share of the burdens when borrowers need rescuing from default. Jerome Booth argues that this burden-sharing dogma flies in the face of insights that can be gleaned from history and conflates what is essentially politically-motivated lending with market-driven lending. It will, he argues, inevitably damage the debtors it is ostensibly designed to help