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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

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.

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.