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Modest initial proposals for a $1 billion Asian bond fund to be invested in by regional central banks are blossoming into more ambitious attempts to develop regional financial markets.

UBS, JPMorgan. Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank all offer some of the best post-trade technology available in this area. UBS and JPMorgan have data-mapping facilities, whereby the bank can recognize the format in which clients send and receive data, and remember that for all future communication. Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers also have systems that allow data to be fed live to a warehouse separate from their platforms. This gives clients more control over the back-office process.

Highly commended: Centradia, FX Connect

Source: www.breakingviews.com is Europe's leading financial commentary service.

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Highly commended: BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan

For buy-side clients, TradeWeb remains the most important single channel for liquidity in the government bond market. In US treasuries, over 65,000 trades a month are executed through the platform, with an average daily volume of over $20 billion. On one day in July, dealers traded $44.8 billion-worth of US treasuries. Trading in European sovereigns increased 86% to e509 billion between the first half of 2002 and the first half of 2003. Average daily volume has hit e4.2 billion.

Although new covered bond jurisdictions such as the UK have monopolized recent headlines, established jurisdictions such as Germany, Spain, and France still account for the bulk of issuance. According to figures from CDC ICM, in the first quarter of 2003 total issuance was €35.6 billion. Of that, obligations foncières accounted for 15%; cédulas hipotecarias for 31%; and jumbo Pfandbriefe for 37%. Obligations foncières, with their true bankruptcy separation, are widely perceived to be among the safest covered bonds. Investors are also fond of them because of the relatively small number of French issuers - Crédit Immobilier de France (CIF), Compagnie de Financement Foncière (CFF), and Dexia Municipal Agency (Dexma).

As Euromoney went to press investors were struggling to come to terms with the freezing by Russian prosecutors of a large block of shares in Yukos. Badly burnt by the 1998 crisis, foreign investors have been slow to return to the Russian stock markets and those that did were all buying shares in Yukos, commonly viewed as Russia's most transparent and best managed company.

Highly commended: Lehman Brothers, State Street

Highly commended: Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs

Highly commended: JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank