Although logistics suggest that regional companies should play a major part in reconstructing Iraq, hopes of big gains have had to be scaled down. In some areas, such as telecoms, the odds look to have been stacked against Arab firms.

The transport system now rivals the weather as a topic of conversation among disgruntled Britons. So there was considerable interest in investor appetite when National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which runs air traffic control services in UK airspace, followed another transport-sector debutant, Network Rail, which maintains the UK rail infrastructure, to the bond markets this summer.

Emerging markets are back. That's the conclusion of the latest quarterly debt survey by Emta, formerly the Emerging Markets Traders Association. In the second quarter of 2003, total emerging-market debt trading passed $1 trillion for the first time in five years.

Significant new oil finds and the completion of several large liquefied natural gas projects will shortly give Egypt's hard-currency earnings a much needed boost. However, continued fiscal and regulatory reform is needed if Cairo is to succeed in creating sustainable and broadly based economic growth.

Country risk index: East Asia continues to lead the growth pack, but offers significant risk; Turkey is - once again - at a turning point; and Africa continues to be unsettled, but with less risk of inter-country contagion.

The murder of prime minister Zoran Djindjic and the ousting of central bank governor Mladjan Dinkic hurt Serbia's free-market reforms. Now the government's hopes lie in privatization.

In the wake of September 11, the US authorities targeted informal financial networks serving people in the Islamic world for particularly severe treatment. One of these was called Barakkat, a cash-transmission network that linked expatriate Somalis living in the US with their impoverished home country. Barakkat was closed down less than a month after the outrage, causing enormous stress to the large expatriate Somali community in the US and their families in Somalia.

A bull run in the Indian stock market is usually cut short by a scam, and then a collapse. Yet, this time the market regulator seemed determined to check market abuse even as the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex index climbed close to the 4000 mark.

Raghuram Rajan, the new IMF chief economist, talks to Euromoney's Julian Evans about controlling special interests, IMF reform, and the difficulties of instituting market democracy in Iraq.

The pan-European asset management industry spends more than $9 billion every year managing and distributing product information, according to research by independent consulting firm SPB Marketing. Software company Activiti has created a product that it believes can help large fund managers to cut costs by up to $5 million by increasing the efficiency of the flow of information between firms and consultants and within the asset management firm itself.

Investors in the US need to decide which numbers to believe. Typically, statistics such as unemployment or capacity utilization are on average revised up or down by 30% within 12 months.

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As Duma and presidential elections loom, the two main Kremlin political factions are vying for control of Russia's development.

The emerging-market bond bubble may be close to bursting as the US economy shows signs of picking up and bondholders digest a recent rise in yields. It means investors will have to dig harder for opportunities in the CEE region.

Results of Euromoney's corporate governance poll suggest that the efforts a company makes to ensure appropriate practices are reflected in its share price.

Banks reported strong results for the first half of the year, so it seems odd that senior executives at US banks are so concerned about stagnant revenues. It has been an issue for two years, but there were ways of getting around it. First came cost-cutting. Then revenue from the consumer sector held up, with sustained buying and remortgaging of houses, and spending on credit. Third was what banks call yield-curve plays and the rest of us proprietary trading.

Fixed-asset investment in China is growing faster than demand, creating overcapacity that may never be drained no matter how fast exports grow. A new burden of potential non-performing loans could be accreting as a result.

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MONGOLIA IS A country of extremes. Landlocked between its two former colonial rulers in a landmass some three times the size of France live just 2.6 million people. A dwindling, ageing one-third of the population ekes out an increasingly precarious living as nomadic herdsmen on Mongolia's vast steppe facing up to the world's widest extremes of temperature.

There's not a lot new about the fact that German corporates need to think about reassessing their funding mix, but a new survey by Siemens Financial Services suggests that their best ideas about how to go about this are not good enough.

It has been a gloomy year so far for the Philippines, a nation mired in corruption whose administration recently faced a mutiny by disaffected soldiers. But a recent court ruling against one of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos's closest allies may offer a glimmer of hope that this country can save itself after all.

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Strong growth and enhanced political stability appear to have broken down the barriers to foreign investment in Russia. But since much of what flows is disguised in various ways, it's hard to state precise figures.

An advocate of privatization and foreign investment, Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Assaf is a key figure in economic change in Saudi Arabia.

David Mulford, chairman of CSFB International and long-term friend of the banks, is set to follow such luminaries as JK Galbraith by becoming US ambassador to India. If his past is anything to go by, expect India to do a billion-dollar debt swap within months.

China's A-share market has such a shady reputation that foreign investors might have been expected to revel in their exclusion from it. But its recent opening to outside institutional investors has been greeted with enthusiasm.

Turkish banks' dependence on earnings from treasury bills has put them in the same ramshackle boat as the government and rendered them apathetic towards innovation and consolidation.

After a weak 2001, most Arab banks enjoyed little pick-up in their fortunes in 2002. However, early results in 2003 suggest that the tide may be turning.

The Kremlin is in two minds about Gazprom. It's a monolithic tool of Russian geopolitics but there are also plans to make it part of a more diversified, liberalized energy industry.

Bond investors finally appear to be getting the message that exposure to commodities can be a useful hedge in a portfolio. And if they have invested in the right commodities, they could find themselves in an excellent position to profit from any forthcoming US interest rate rise.