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ABB has had a rough 12 months. The Switzerland-headquartered power and automation technologies conglomerate was faced with the worst operating environment for its businesses in 20 years. It was making heavy losses and was also saddled with an increasing asbestos liability at US subsidiary Combustion Engineering.

Bear markets breed their own types of deals - balance sheet repair, restructuring, liability management, monetization of illiquid assets, securitization, opportunistic acquisitions. The pace and intensity of such deals may vary between the long hard slog and sudden bursts of activity, but companies and bankers that do well in them tend to share certain characteristics: a refusal to accept defeat, creativity that may be inspired by desperation, and a determination to deal with complexity and hold their nerve. Banks must sometimes underwrite risks they would rather not take, just to complete deals.

The IMF has come under heavy fire for its decision last month to roll over $6 billion it lent to Argentina. The republic has failed to implement or even promise any of the reforms the IMF considers necessary, say critics, and the Fund has lost credibility by caving in to the Argentines' blackmail tactics.

Cades, the state-backed agency set up to pay off France's social security debt, has sizeable yearly funding needs and prides itself on the quality and regularity of the information it provides to the market.

Central & Eastern Europe Asia Latin America North America

Fixed income

Executives at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have pulled off what could turn out to be the most important coup in the institution's recent history. It's not the launch of their IPO in December, although that must count as a great success in itself given both the sheer effort of transforming from a mutual to a public company as well as going public in the toughest new issue market for decades.

Stock markets started 2003 in a relatively buoyant mood. The view seemed to be that the world economy would come out of a soft patch, that the Bush administration would deliver tax cuts that sustained US consumer spending and that war in Iraq would go smoothly and quickly, slashing oil prices.

Lang Kwai Fong - the area in Hong Kong where you go to drink before you hit the really seedy bars - used to be a good gauge of how happy and confident expatriates were. According to an Australian banker, in the 1990s it was busy during the good times and quiet during the bad. These days, though, expats have changed their drinking habits.

Western Europe Central & Eastern Europe Asia Latin America

In his first two months in the job, Bernie Dan, chief executive of the Chicago Board of Trade, has made two quick and bold decisions. It was the second that got the most publicity: the announcement to dump the exchange's joint venture with Eurex in favour of using the Liffe Connect trading platform.

The days of large foreign investment flows to Latin America appear to be over. Companies and countries in the region are therefore going to have to find new ways to achieve sustainable growth.