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Mortgage-backed deals continued to dominate European structured finance in 2003 but deals funding complex infrastructure projects began to make a big splash, with monoline insurers taking on an indispensable role. Mark Brown reports.

One exchange's successful capture of liquidity from another is a rare event. So why are both the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse attempting to take Dutch equities business away from Euronext? Peter Koh reports

Deutsche Bank is set to offer tailor-made corporate governance research on FTSE 350 companies before the end of the first quarter of 2004. Aimed at fund managers, it offers systematic analysis of corporate governance issues at top companies, providing further context for the financial numbers.

Headlines exposing torrid tales of corporate miscreants and tough talk by governments and regulators about imposing new standards have kept the issue of corporate governance bubbling over in recent times. Investors suspect companies are paying no more than lip service. However, a few Asian companies have been quietly setting their own standards - and reaping significant gains. Chris Leahy reports.

By Mike Monnelly & Camilla Palladino

George Soros, billionaire speculator and philanthropist, was in a bad mood when he addressed the US Russian Investment Conference in Boston last month. On November 6, "40 hooded goons" raided the Moscow office of his Open Russia philanthropic venture, and took away boxes of files.

From banking to bongos. Until 2001, Jay MacDonald was a nickel trader, most recently for Standard Bank in London. But 18 months ago he ditched his day job and six-figure salary to become a professional bongo drum player.

Long-term themes, such as the US current account deficit and output gap, have caught the forex market's attention and will be crucial to the dollar exchange rate. Lara Rhame reports

Activity might be picking up in M&A departments but that hasn't stemmed the flow of experienced bankers willing to make the leap into corporate in-house teams. Partly it's a case of unemployed corporate financiers taking any job on offer. Recruiters say that the candidate pool in M&A is still much bigger than the number of jobs available, and there are now more positions going at corporates. "The money's nothing like what you get in the good times at a bank, but we have got corporate assignments on our books at the moment, but not banking ones, which speaks for itself," says David Timson, senior partner of recruitment firm The Curzon Partnership.

Has Silicon Valley finally got its groove back? Venture capital investment in start-up companies rose to $35 million in the third quarter, up 36% on the previous three months. M&A activity is also rising. And talk of a $20 billion initial public offering by Google is generating the kind of buzz last experienced in 1999.

BCP's small size gives it an advantage when trading the sort of Latin companies it targets - those that operate beneath the big boys' radar - Felix Salmon reports.