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It's that time of year all employees look forward to - the Christmas office party, a chance to let down your hair with fellow colleagues and drink and eat your employer out of business. But it is not only the bar bill your boss could be dreading.

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GE is not just a big lender. Through its diverse manufacturing and service operations the group has also built up vast experience in business processes. So it was reckoned to make sense to offer consultancy to potential clients for free in the hope that their businesses would grow on the back of that advice and that they would then turn to GE to fund that expansion.

Dropping the First Boston name is the easy part of Credit Suisse's plan to refocus its investment banking strategy, a plan to be officially unveiled this month. It will be harder for the Swiss bank to figure what it wants CSFB to become. Some early indications about where CSFB might place its bets in response to external and internal pressures suggest it might be embarking on another arduous journey.

Top bankers' talking shop the Institute of International Finance and the G-20 group of sovereign borrowers have proudly unveiled a new set of principles for orderly restructuring of sovereign debt. The Argentina fiasco underscores the urgent need for such an agreement. Unfortunately, this one was negotiated without much input from the most important groups of creditors.

The biggest ever mutual fund scandal is staring us in the face, reckons Henry Blodget. All that is needed is for an aggressive prosecutor to capitalize on the obvious.

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Asian governments have been fighting a rearguard action to hold down their currencies. They have stopped external surpluses from fuelling domestic inflation. But they are at their limits.

Disclosure rules are forcing issuers to consider listing outside the EU, reports Michael Evans. Switzerland's SWX sees an opportunity to win business from its European rivalsThe Swiss Exchange (SWX) has launched its first offensive in what promises to be a long battle to snatch Eurobond business away from London and Luxembourg. Last month, representatives of the exchange visited capital markets law firms in London in a bid to convince lawyers of the benefits to non-EU issuers of switching to SWX. The SWX sales pitch is based on new rules unveiled on November 15. These make a Swiss listing relatively easy at a time when Europe's transparency and prospectus directives will impose costly reporting requirements on companies listed in the EU.

Investors are now content with the quality of secondary bond markets in Europe. They can transact large sizes on tight bid-offer spreads without moving prices against themselves. But is this just a bull market phenomenon?

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