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What are the defining traits that good investment bankers share? Energy, creativity, entrepreneurship, willingness and ability to take risk, the strength of intelligence to form independent views of the world and the courage to back them: all traits that tend to be driven out of people when they become institutionalized within large organizations under cynical leaders. Everyone toiling at the coalface in a large bank should take lessons from the stories that follow of those who have quit to set up on their own. There's never been a better time to do it.

IMF Delegates

Emerging markets offer US funds significantly safer investment opportunities than some G7 countries, according to new research from risk analysis firm RiskMetrics.

Country Risk Methodology

Selling more products to fewer clients

Ghana has stolen a march on its rivals in the world of peacekeeping operations. The ministry of defence drew down in August the first instalment of a $55 million loan from Barclays that will enable it to upgrade its military equipment and secure higher-margin reimbursement from the UN for a stint in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ibrahim bin Abdulaziz Al-Assaf, Saudi Arabia's minister of finance and national economy since 1996, has steered the economy through a difficult period. He has played a leading role in the modernization, diversification and liberalization of the Saudi economy and managed its finances prudently in a period in which oil prices have swung between $10 and $30 a barrel. Al-Assaf, a 54-year old economist who has served as the country's executive director at the World Bank for six years and as vice-governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (Sama) and wins Euromoney's finance minister of the year award for 2003, spoke to Nigel Dudley in his office in Riyadh.

A new capital markets law, continued privatization and an eventual opening up to foreign investors should boost Saudi Arabia's equity market.

After two years' frantic activity and expenditure banks are still struggling to understand, let alone control, terrorist financing. Governments have failed to support the financial community with resources, skills and systems. The implications for global security are alarming.

Five years after Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt, burning foreign investors, the government is poised to return to international capital markets next year with $2.76 billion of Eurobond issues. Thanks to the country's revival, investors are salivating at the prospect of fresh Russian paper.