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After a four-month absence from the market, Yann Gindre - ex UBS, BZW, Commerzbank and Chase - has finally resurfaced. But he's not going back to banking. Gindre was always one of the more colourful bond origination professionals, but he has decided to hang up his Euromarket hat and become, of all things, a headhunter.

The best guess as to the eventual size of Chinese banks’ bad debts is that they will be many times larger than initial official estimates. In a desperate effort to clean up their balance sheets, banks have shifted bad debts to asset management companies. But there’s no sign that these can offload them to new money investors or engineer decent recovery rates. And there’s plenty more to come. Ministers may feel a little queasy when they get the final bill.

When its audacious bid to hire 40 debt markets bankers from CSFB failed, Barclays Capital quickly turned its attention to Deutsche Bank. In an effort to build up its US and global debt businesses, it has been quietly hiring for months. Now the big name new recruits from Deutsche must ensure this investment bears fruit.

Monetary union’s effect on European investment patterns is giving rise to a host of new benchmarks. In both equities and bonds, index providers are scrambling for continental superiority. New providers can win market share quickly but the established names are fighting back.

Western Europe: Alfa Laval

What do you get if you take a room of 150 foreign exchange professionals and quiz them on their favourite subject? The answer is a surprising number of wrong answers. At Euromoney's annual FX awards dinner in London last month, banks pitted their wits against each other in teams of 10, under the auspices of quizmaster Magnus Magnusson. Only one came anywhere close to getting full marks, so close, in fact that rivals insisted they must be the luckiest of guessers. As for the rest, not a single team knew the date of the UK's black Wednesday - September 16 1992. One of the leading American FX banks thought the currency of Ethiopia was the pound (it's the birr), and drew a blank on Kazakhstan (tenge). As if that wasn't bad enough, the closing rate of euro against the dollar on the previous day also momentarily escaped them. They did manage to recall who finished top of Euromoney's first foreign exchange poll in 1969 however.

Is all that talk of looming recession and job losses getting you down? Sick of being told to look for bargains? Was last month's recommendation of Smith and Wollensky's Nasdaq special lunch just too depressing? Then perhaps the millionaire's margarita is for you. Yes, in a determined effort to appeal to the would-be obnoxiously wealthy in us all, Grand Marnier is trying to promote the millionaire's margarita as the drink to have to celebrate a deal or just simply spend your severance package.

Western Europe: KfW

In early May, Katsuyuki Sugita, president of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB) and co-CEO of the newly created Mizuho Bank, returned to duty from sick leave. He made all the right noises to staff that he was fighting fit - "full of power and energy" - and ready to play a full part in the next stage of the merger of DKB, Fuji Bank and Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ).

Asia: Kamco

US: Wells Fargo

Latin America: CVRD