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The latest entry route to the lucrative wealth management business appears to be via the back office. Fidelity, which has provided technology services through its brokerage business to family offices for more than a decade, is now creating a stand-alone business that will provide family offices in the US with a platform offering technology-based solutions and wealth management services.

A five-year battle between the European Commission and Germany came to a head in October as the commissioner for internal markets launched a lawsuit against the German government for flouting EU competition rules. The state has refused to offload its "golden share" in Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker, which prevents a hostile foreign takeover.

Directors of treasury or finance in the US have enjoyed salary increases of 4.8% during 2004 compared to the average salary increase for finance professionals of 3.6%. According to a salary report by the Association of Finance Professionals (AFP), the US-based organisation for finance professionals, this stands barely above the national average for a salary increase in the US of 3.5%. But, as every finance executive knows, the question of salary and the question of bonus can be quite different. In 2004, in fact, the average executive bonus was equal to 33% of the employee's base salary.

The SEC is pursuing more and more hedge fund abuses. It hopes that requiring managers to register, as passed by the regulator on October 26, will eradicate the problem. It won't. Investors need to see independent valuations.

Heinrich Pecina muses on his 15 years working in banking in central and eastern Europe. "It's a strange thing," he says, "but whenever I have worked for a larger institution in the region, after my departure it has ceased to exist." You could call it the curse of Pecina. He started his banking career working for Girozentrale. After he left it in 1990 it was taken over by Erste Bank. He then joined Creditanstalt as head of investment banking, where for the next seven years he built up the firm's brand as one of central and eastern Europe's top investment banks.

"It's not true that you need to be bald to get on the board of Rathbone Brothers, but it helps." So says Andy Pomfret, who was promoted from finance director to chief executive at the private-client UK investment manager at the beginning of October, replacing Roy Morris. Pomfret was speaking at a Private Asset Management Conference in London alongside similarly bald colleague Richard Lanyon who heads investment management. The double act discussed the UK strategy and the push in the unit trust management business, which will contribute to group profits for the first time this year.

Ukraine was evenly divided ahead of presidential elections on October 31 as leading opposition candidate and liberal reformer Viktor Yushchenko faced off with the establishment's candidate, prime minister Viktor Yanukovich. Campaigning has been dirty and the threat of riots will hang over Kiev if the opposition feels it has been cheated out of an election victory that could shake up the balance of power and define foreign policy after a decade of dithering between turning east or west. The stakes are high: the two candidates were running neck and neck on the eve of the vote and Ukraine is the only former Soviet republic that can boast a grassroots political opposition.

The covered bond market is growing fast on heavy demand for alternatives to supra/agency debt and on buoyant supply as more and more countries pass enabling legislation. Pfandbriefe might still dominate but expansion is bringing in its wake a wide variety of variants on this classical model.

Banking is in the blood for Ariel Salama, global head of private banks at ABN Amro's wholesale clients business. For almost 300 years his family ran a bank that financed Egypt's cotton business, until the 1952 revolution forced closure and a move to Paris. There, his great-uncle, Maurice de Botton, (uncle to Gilbert de Botton, founding chairman of Global Asset Management) established Banque Générale du Commerce, where Salama began his banking career.

As Singapore moves to meet the challenges of globalization and the greater influence of China and India, once-sleepy Temasek Holdings has been told to hike returns and promote a new vision. The result: frenetic activity.

Wrestling with regulation

Few Russian companies have done foreign IPOs, and even fewer have issued domestically. That looks set to change in the next 12 months. Investors should expect more diversity, some big winners - and one or two unpleasant surprises.