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The US spends and the rest of the world lends. But the US is spending too much, and if Asian central banks don't keep lending, this year could bring unprecedented risk for bond investors. That was the message from Laura D'Andrea Tyson, former chairman of US president Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, in her keynote address to the 10th Euromoney Bond Investors Congress in London on February 24.

Iran is finding it difficult to cope with high levels of unemployment in a youthful population. Despite vast energy resources, accelerated reform is vital if the economy is to be transformed. Kate Luxford reports.

Wal-Mart has acquired Bompreco, a Brazilian retail chain with 118 hypermarkets, supermarkets and mim-markets, from Ahold for $300 million.

Source: www.breakingviews.comis Europe's leading financial commentary service Sanofi's attempted e48 billion takeover of Aventis is just the latest in a string of merger moves in the drugs sector over the past decade. To get an idea of the scale of the activity, consider that the market share of the top 10 companies has risen from 25% in 1988 to around 50% today. And there is much further to go, as pill-making is still a highly fragmented activity compared with other sectors of the economy.

At the end of February, Standard & Poor's revised its outlook on Volkswagen's single-A rating from stable to negative, owing to the car company's lower than expected 2003 earnings. VW's operating profits were down 48% to e2.5 billion in 2003, according to its headline numbers published last month. S&P said the sales performance of its new Golf, retaining its profitability in Europe and its ability to carry out planned annual cost cutting of e1 billion were the company's key challenges in 2004.

Asia's leaders are playing a dangerous game of poker with the US, accumulating dollar reserves even as the US currency falls. Excess liquidity is driving stock markets in Asia and threatens to inflate bubbles while economic restructuring is patchy. The game cannot continue indefinitely: the end could be ugly. Chris Leahy reports.

The Dutch B2B group pulls off a large restructuring to survive a liquidity crunch amid heavy trading of its debt by US hedge funds.

It is just past midnight at The Morning Night Bar a few doors down from Bangkok's notorious Nana Entertainment Plaza and the party is in full swing. Loud rock music belts from speakers, clouds of cigarette smoke hug the pool tables and groups of inebriated western men clutch younger-looking Thai consorts as the Singha beer flows and the good times roll.

Selling off Germany's autobahns and lamp posts are two of the more bizarre proposals of a government desperate to raise cash to bail out an ailing economy. The irony is that while there is broad agreement that changes are needed, the country's consensus system of politics is impeding progress. Ben Aris reports.

Amid the roll-out of China's vast privatization programme international attention is focused on the transfers of big state-owned enterprises. But the ownership of thousands of other smaller operations is being changed via hundreds of small, local asset exchanges. Regulation of these is being beefed up. Chris Leahy reports.

President Vladimir Putin surprised everyone with his appointment of unknown technocrat Mikhail Fradkov to replace sacked prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Fradkov is Russia's envoy to the EU, based in Brussels. Before this, he was director of the tax police. In many ways, he is a compromise candidate between the two Kremlin factions of the security services and the liberal reformers. He has served in the Russian security council, giving him links to the former, and also served in Yegor Gaidar's reformist government in the early 1990s, giving him some credibility with the latter group. He is not well-known but regarded as a competent bureaucrat who will, above all, be loyal to Putin.

On February 25, the Bahrain Monetary Agency went on the road to sell a $250 million sukuk – Bahrain's first international Islamic bond. Bahrain's bond follows issues by Qatar and Malaysia. And the news that Citigroup is working with the German state of Saxony-Anhalt on an Islamic bond suggests that, as well as being used to boost the Islamic capital markets, sukuks can be commercially attractive to a broad audience.