Search results for

European banks risk finding themselves outpaced by US competitors in the bid to protect and exploit their intellectual property.

Ecuador's finance minister, Jorge Gallardo, is a popular man on Wall Street. He's very bright, with a quick wit and a solid grasp of economic fundamentals and economists' concerns. But when he visited New York in May, his demeanour was visibly subdued.

After a hectic period of consolidation, Portuguese banks have fed heartily off rapid economic growth, building substantial loan books, particularly in the retail sector. The boom is continuing but credit quality worries are beginning to emerge and a slowdown in growth could seriously hurt banks’ profits.

Offered a rare chance to jump into the first rank of transition economies, the jewel of the Adriatic must choose between getting ahead and just getting by.

Latin America: CVRD

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.

Asia: Kamco

US: Wells Fargo

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.

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).

Issuer: People’s Republic of China Amount: $1 billion and e550 million Types of deal: Eurobonds Date: May 17 2001 Bookrunners: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley (for dollars) and Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank (euros)