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This year, for the first time, Euromoney has presented its award for central bank governor of the year to someone who isn't a central bank governor (see Euromoney September 2004). At the end of September, two weeks before the IMF/World Bank meetings, the mandate of Argentina's Alfonso Prat-Gay expired and president Néstor Kirchner did not renew it. By Argentine standards, Prat-Gay had a good term. As he said, when receiving his award from Padraic Fallon, chairman of Euromoney Institutional Investor: "When we took office in December 2002 we had a lot of ambitions, the main one being to make it to the end of the term – this being a country whose central bank is only 68 years old and has had 48 governors along the way."

While the Gazprom-Rosneft merger will make FDI in Russia easier, Ukraine's attempt to keep the retail petrol market competitive is on hold.

As Oscar Wilde said, there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. For structured finance professionals, there can't be much that is more gratifying than being talked about at the annual Global ABS summit in Barcelona. With anyone who is anyone in attendance, it's the ultimate confirmation of your status in the industry. So when US monoline insurer Financial Guaranty Insurance Company (FGIC) announced in June that it had hired Rick Watson, formerly head of ABS and CDOs, structured capital markets, at HSBC in London, the timing was perfect. The news went round the Hotel Arts and the adjoining bars and beach-clubs and Watson was a celebrity.

The SEC's authority to reform the US funds sector is coming under fire — even from law firms. Legal action against the SEC is being expected in some quarters.

Moments before ageing rocker Elton John appeared on stage for a noisy rendition of 'Benny and the Jets', Gary Coull, chairman of CLSA, the hosts of the evening's bash and Asia's only remaining independent equity broker, addressed the audience. There were 2,000 of them — fund managers, company executives and other hangers-on lucky or devious enough to sneak an invitation to what is arguably Hong Kong's biggest annual shindig.

Serbia returns to the capital markets

Euromoney polled cash managers, treasurers and financial officers at 5,600 non-financial companies in 73 countries. We received in total 1,154 valid replies to questions relating to international cash management services (2003: 367 replies) from 66 countries. This year's poll only included questions relating to international cash management services. (The 2003 poll included 1,061 replies in total, 694 of which answered questions relating to service provision in their home country only.) Respondents were asked to indicate: which three banks they currently used most for their cash management services to rate services provided by their lead cash manager on a sliding scale of 1=excellent; 2=very good; 3=good; 4=fair; 5=poor. Banks' scores in each category are the percentage of ratings they received for that category that were very good or excellent.

Nothing indicates better how a business has matured than when established forces start buying and upstarts are willing to sell.

Investec Asset Management is celebrating its success in UK managed funds by offering punters the chance to win a Land Rover. To win, entrants must answer four questions about the firm's Cautious Managed and Managed Distribution Funds.

Without much fanfare, the American Stock Exchange has achieved remarkable success over the past two years in attracting new listings, especially from foreign issuers.

With credit analysts predicting that overall levels of investment-grade corporate issuance in Europe will end the year even lower than they had previously expected, banks are turning their attention to the more lucrative and active European high-yield market.