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There was great potential for confusion at Deutsche Bank?s London office one day last month. Standing in the grand reception area was a large sign bearing the words ?Welcome to Marks and Spencer?.

Free money and a profligate fiscal policy in the US have achieved the near impossible - job creation. But don't count on a sustained upswing and meanwhile look to equities as the asset of last resort.

Investment banks are bulking up their presence in mortgage lending, once the exclusive domain of their commercial and retail brethren. For some, such as Merrill Lynch, the advantage lies in being able to offer yet another financial product to its wealthy private clients.

Private investors and institutions have both benefited from the flexibility of hedge fund products. But as the market matures, the products available have become more complex and the strategies employed more diverse. And with market growth comes a possible dilution of the hedge fund ideal. What should investors do now?

The panic selling that hit high-yield bonds, high-yield currencies, and emerging-country debt and equity markets last month has utterly destroyed market consensus.

Igor Yurgens, executive secretary of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, is a little wistful. “We used to have regular meetings with president Putin, roundtable discussions, normally in the presence of the prime minister and chief of staff,” he says. “We delivered a message, and usually he listened attentively, then we prepared a draft law if required. Then we’d work through bilateral committees and commissions.” But invitations from the Kremlin have got scarcer. “There has been a pause since the Khordorkovsky case,” Yurgens says. “We haven’t had any of these roundtable discussions since June last year. We had a chance to express some of our concerns to the president at our congress in October 2003, and that’s it. So now we’re waiting for a new meeting. It’s supposed to take place this month, and we’re hoping the dialogue will be resumed there. But at the moment, it’s pretty tense.”

Siemens Financial Services (SFS) has teamed up with UK securitization boutique SecDebt to try to bring SMEs and mid-cap companies to the capital markets. SFS and SecDebt reckon that between them they can cut the cost of issuing bonds backed by invoice debt in trade receivables-style deals.

There have been more rumours in the past two years that CSFB and Credit Suisse were about to be sold than there have been sightings of Elvis. And like the King of Rock 'n' Roll, these rumours just won't go away. The recent spate of commercial bank mergers in the US fuelled speculation, with Credit Suisse said to be hooking up with Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and, lately, HSBC.

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By George B. Challenor, Head of Investment Strategy, CSPB

Once derided as a UK anachronism, corporate broking is now the hottest game in the City. Morgan Stanley is the latest player to try to muscle in.

Merrill Lynch is the corporate broking success story that everyone wants to replicate. This can clearly be seen from the fact that Morgan Stanley was not the first to decide to go shopping at Merrill for its corporate broking team.