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What do the the CEO of Standard Chartered, the finance minister of Pakistan, the central bank governor of the Philippines and the opposition leader in Liberia have in common? They all used to work at Citibank.

Former Citibanker Deogracias Vistan has taken over as CEO of Equitable PCI, and his main goal is to clean up the bank's balance sheet and its image. The bank’s relationship with Joseph Erap Estrada does not make Vistan’s task an easy one.

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.

If ever a finance minister was in the firing line, Shaukat Aziz is that man. The 30-year veteran of Citibank is saddled with the task of selling yet another military government in Pakistan to a sceptical international investor community.

What better way to start off an awards ceremony than with a quick reminder of one's place in the world? That's the tack comedian Stephen Fry took as he introduced Euromoney's second annual awards dinner at the Natural History Museum in London last month.

Goldman Sachs has acquired useful data-mining technology and a potentially lucrative distribution agreement with online retail brokers TD Waterhouse and Charles Schwab. The irony is that these are the viable remnants of a venture that was designed to cut into the equity origination and distribution business of the likes of Goldman. Antony Currie reports on the rapid rise and fall of Epoch Partners, a great idea whose execution was predicated on a persistent bull market

The European leveraged buy-out market appears to have found its feet again after a nervous first quarter. But banks remain cautious about lending to highly geared deals. Can institutional investors such as collateralized debt obligation funds fill the gap?

The growing use of the internet in financial services provides a new challenge to banks' already stretched in-house technology teams. They must build new systems quickly at a time of rapid and fundamental developments in software and financial operations. The risk is that banks may spend heavily to develop proprietary systems that are already out of date by the time they are up and running. Application service providers may offer the answer, if banks can bring themselves to trust them.

Recent defaults on equipment vendor loans have prompted questions about the way corporates manage credit risk. Industrial companies have amassed many billions in credit exposure as a side product of their main business. Now, under growing pressure from equity investors and rating agencies, some companies are starting to quantify and reduce their mountains of trade debt.

A new emerging-market crisis, to follow that of 1998, has surfaced. The immediate Argentine crisis will be resolved. The politicians there have proposed budget cuts that, if supported domestically and implemented, will provide some relief for a while. But this won't address Argentina's growth dilemma. That's a supply-side issue and the downside of a vastly overvalued currency. And it won't do the trick of getting interest rates down to levels where Argentina could grow either. As for Turkey, I have no hope that interest rates there can be got down to sustainable levels either.

This year’s ranking of the largest 250 emerging-market banks indicates that China’s banks are still way ahead of their rivals in terms of size. Citigroup’s acquisition of Banamex will give impetus to consolidation in Latin America where banks will need sheer size to survive. Few of the handful of east European banks in the tables are expected to be still there in 2002. By Andrew Newby, with data from Moody’s Investors Service.

Secondary loan trading has traditionally been seen as rather a dirty business by European financial institutions.