Search results for

Euromoney's September edition had already gone to press when news broke of the horriffc terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The sheer scale of the destruction and loss of life numbs the mind, making rational analysis almost impossible. Financial markets consist of nothing more than men and women buying and selling. In the immediate aftermath few could turn their minds to anything so mundane as dealing or stock tipping. It's likely that every reader of Euromoney will have known people who worked in the World Trade Centre and it is with those unfortunate individuals that most people's thoughts now lie.

The February currency crisis has left Turkish banks bereft of capital. Disciplines imposed after the December 1999 IMF stand-by agreement mean that they are unable to replenish their reserves in the time-honoured way – by lending to the government. Underlying the sector’s particular problems – the only answer to which seems to lie in consolidation and foreign investment – is a generalized economic quagmire in which flounders a discredited political elite. There is little optimism to be found among those in the know in Turkey and the most pessimistic predict that a third crisis is just around the corner.

Hong Kong is facing a crisis - how to fund an increasing budget deficit at a time of almost unprecedented economic downturn.

Despite the dire state of the Japanese economy, yen-denominated issues have maintained their popularity, providing borrowers useful diversity and a domestic investor base hungry for yield.

Erste Bank sets its sights on large local corporates, a less coveted market for regional expansion, but one that could prove to have greater potential.

President Putin’s has pushed through a swathe of reforming laws, spearheading his drive to liberalization. But implementation will not be easy. Nor can it be assumed that the liberals will stay in the ascendancy. Business oligarchs and the conservatives are asserting themselves as Putin struggles to pick a way through conflicting interests.

John Reed kept himself to himself in the latter part of his career at Citibank. And these days he is pretty reclusive. Colleagues say he is still haunted by the period in 1999 when, in the aftermath of Citi’s takeover by Travelers, he was eclipsed by his co-chairman, Sandy Weill.

The Paris Club of official bilateral creditors is promoting the view that holders of sovereign bonds should take their share of the burdens when borrowers need rescuing from default. Jerome Booth argues that this burden-sharing dogma flies in the face of insights that can be gleaned from history and conflates what is essentially politically-motivated lending with market-driven lending. It will, he argues, inevitably damage the debtors it is ostensibly designed to help

World Bank president James Wolfensohn has spent an unprecedented amount of time and energy reaching out to civil society. The Bank's management, however, now faces a difficult, if not impossible balancing act as a result.

Brazil is the powerhouse of Latin America: by far the region's largest economy - and largest debtor - it acts as a proxy for the rest of South America. And it's in trouble. The slowing global economy is pumping less money into the country, an energy crisis has created an internal supply shock, and uncertainty over next year's elections is increasing. At the same time, Brazil's exports are too low, its population too poorly educated, and its domestic savings woefully inadequate if it is to compete on the international stage. With all of that to contend with, the last thing Brazil needed was the tango effect: contagion from neighbouring Argentina. Felix Salmon asks whether Brazil, along with the rest of South America, is falling back into crisis

For some hard-bitten corporate executives and the more cynical investors, the concept of corporate governance is doubtless too nebulous and idealistic to bother with. But for many it has acquired sufficient substance to serve as Euromoney surveyed companies contained in one or more of the following categories as of June 15 2001:

Years from now, the banking crisis of today will probably be seen as the beginning of a period when market dominance started to pass to foreign hands.