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Hedge funds regularly close or return money to investors, so the decision last month by David Muschel to return capital to investors in his Jemmco fund ought to have been unexceptional. But the explanation he gave gives pause for thought. Some of the fund's strategies, he said, simply cannot perform in today's environment.

To integrate or not is the question facing Ukraine?s powerful oligarchs in the last months of president Leonid Kuchma?s 10-years in power.

Despite pockets where problems persist, privatization, consolidation, and improved risk management and regulation are bringing widespread advances in emerging market banking systems.

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The UK's financial regulator will take a dim view of companies that respond in a legalistic way to its investigations, threatening exemplary sanctions against those that don't cooperate fully.

Despite Baillie Gifford?s lack of corporate activity, the firm has set up several joint ventures. Amin Rajan, CEO at research firm Create, says: "JVs fit well with the structure and it?s a sign of growing confidence."

There is no room for nostalgia in the new-look Merrill Lynch. Charles Merrill might have wanted to bring Wall Street to the masses but it is the affluent who command the most attention from his successors. Since 2000, James Gorman has shaken up the private-client business with dramatic results.

Merrill Lynch (Bank) Suisse is the largest of Merrill's onshore international businesses, with $11.16 billion assets under management. Regarded as separate from the GPC business, the Swiss bank has been re-establishing links with it over the past two years in a bid to boost business. "While the Swiss bank wasn't making a loss, assets had settled to about $9 billion and stayed there," says Nick Stonestreet, who became CEO of the Swiss bank in July last year. "There were many things that needed addressing, such as service quality, but the most important move in the last year has been a reconnection to Merrill Lynch GPC. Before that we tended to stand alone."

Merrill's asset management business, MLIM, is getting back to its retail roots. Originally established in the US to serve the private-client business, MLIM grew, in part by the acquisition of mercury Asset Management in the UK, to become an institutional asset manager. Now, says Bob McCann, vice-chairman of the wealth management group that comprises GPC and MLIM: "We have developed a third-party retail business that is profitable and growing fast."

Rapid growth in the asset-backed commercial paper market has stretched liquidity lines. Sponsors have therefore begun to develop innovative new structures to cope with the problem

European corporates are making the most of burgeoning demand in the US private placement market. This raises the profile of the asset class but is hampering the development of an equivalent market in Europe and might be prompting banks to oversell issuers.

The first day of the Goodwood Festival last month, one of the UK?s most important horse-racing events and a highlight of the summer season for over 200 years, was indeed memorable. ?Glorious Goodwood?, dubbed the most beautiful racecourse in the world, lived up to its reputation. A number of ABN Amro?s senior debt and equity capital markets bankers and an assortment of journalists basked in sunshine, enjoying the scene. The only trouble was picking the right horses. Nearly everyone went for Pango, the winner in the last race, shunning another horse called Freeloader, even though it seemed to be running in ABN Amro colours.