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Which economic bloc is going to perform best this year, Europe or North America? The consensus is that the US is heading for very low growth, say under 2%, while Europe will do better, with 2.5% at least.

The pace of yen borrowing in international markets and in the Japanese domestic market by non-Japanese issuers has slowed just slightly in 2001, following last year’s boom. Downgrades of some large corporate issues have meant losses for Japanese buyers. But foreign names are still issuing yen bonds in healthy volumes and will continue to do so for as long as Japanese investors are deprived of attractive domestic alternatives.

With the domestic economy still in a weak state, Japanese corporates are reluctant to go to the relatively expensive international bond markets for funding. Domestic borrowing is cheaper, particularly as banks are being encouraged by the government to lend on easy terms despite the hangover of bad debt. Only the highest rated Japanese borrowers are raising funds in international markets.

Iceland’s economy has boomed since joining the European Economic Area in 1993 brought market-based reforms. The economy has diversified, but now the government wants to rein growth in. That’s hit the stock market.

There has been a spate of investment-grade companies getting downgraded to junk, or even default status over the past 18 months, but to see the triple-A-rated securitized bonds of what was an investment-grade company at the start of 2000 hit the ropes is something new and more shocking.

Washington was in a tizzy last month after the sudden defection from the Republican party of senator James Jeffords of Vermont. Jeffords' historic move tipped control of an evenly divided US Senate to the Democrats and it came within a whisker of changing the fate of the Bush administration's tax proposals. But Jeffords decided to stay in the Republican fold for a few more days until Congress could finish work on that all-important bill. Big bucks had been riding on the outcome for Wall Street.

Global head of corporate finance and recovery, PriceWaterhouse Coopers

Just when bond investors thought it was safe to go back into the telecom sector, Moody's dropped a bombshell. By downgrading British Telecom's long term debt two notches to Baa1 last month, it threw a sector showing glimmers of recovery into disarray. Most astonishing to investors and galling to BT's management was the fact that Moody's chose May 10, the day BT announced its rights issue - the lynchpin of its debt reduction plans - to break the bad news, fuelling speculation that it was privy to particularly damming information about the company.

For a nation of such a small population - just under 280,000 - Icelanders have managed to achieve a remarkable amount of firsts. The world's first national parliament, the Althingi, was established in 930 AD after a group of pagans from Norway had travelled to Iceland in search of freedom from the oppressive but impressively named King Harald Fairhair. The world's first elected female head of state, Vigdís Finnbógadottir gained office in Iceland in 1980. The country was also the birthplace of the first European to set foot on the continent of North America, the intrepid Leifur Eiríksson achieving this feat in the year 1000 AD, beating Christopher Columbus to the accolade by almost 500 years.

April's budget proposals from UK finance minister Gordon Brown contained a few little noticed but significant measures that might benefit UK companies, notably the proposal to make purchases of intangible assets, including goodwill, tax deductible bringing the UK into line with the US.

Privatization has been the fate of all but a few of Europe's unquoted financial institutions. Demutualization is all the rage. Non-shareholder banking models are few and far between, but Spain is a notable exception. Here, the private savings banks are growing and consolidating and show no signs of letting go of their special legal status. The Spanish savings bank model has virtually no critics. It has proved itself a successful structure because of a number of features. Most notably, since the creation of these unique financial institutions over a century ago, there has not been a single default.

In the May Issue of Euromoney the result of the vote for hotels in Tokyo were omitted from the Business Travel Poll.