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Those central and eastern European countries that have pushed furthest and fastest with privatization have benefited from healthy government finances, restructuring and modernization of key industries and enhanced economic growth. That’s undeniable. But privatization remains ever politically contentious. Selling their banking systems to foreigners was hard to stomach, and now these countries are selling even more essential services, their energy generators and power distributors. If they can maintain the political will, at least governments will find buyers in these sectors, unlike in telecommunications.

Last month's announcement of a merger between DG Bank and GZ Bank was a long awaited step in the consolidation of the top level of Germany's cooperative banking sector.

Romania is not planning to over-compensate for scarcity by issuing heavily. But it is clearly keen to establish itself in the international debt markets.

Turkish banks will have to roll over $6 billion in syndicated debt this year. Though first-tier banks will be able to roll over, albeit at higher interest rates, life will not be so easy for medium-sized and smaller banks.

In Russia, large financial-industrial groups exist alongside a new breed of commercially-minded and successful industrial groups that have made their money by more traditional and honest means.

The Emerging Market Creditors Association is becoming nervous because Ecuador included exit constraints in its exchange offer. Now they have been used successfully once, they may be used again elsewhere.

Chile is reckoned to be the best organized country in Latin America, so no-one was expecting any surprises when Santiago was chosen to host the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) annual meetings in March. It was expected that there would be lots of optimism about Mexico and its investment-grade credit rating, optimism too about the surprisingly smooth way in which the Peruvian elections seem to be panning out, and positive noises about a US soft landing and the way in which Argentina, with the help of the IMF, was attempting to extricate itself from economic stagnation.

On February 28, Indian finance minister Yashwant Sinha announced an annual budget that should have given a strong push to economic growth. Tax cuts, a sharp cut in interest rates and a raising of the ceiling on foreign portfolio investment in Indian companies should have given the stock markets the boost they badly needed.

The German Pfandbrief market, in particular the jumbo sector, has grown dramatically in recent years and assumed a larger and larger slice of European bond fund managers’ portfolios. But now many of the leading issuers face significant challenges in the underlying lending businesses that generate Pfandbrief collateral. The German mortgage banks are seeking non-traditional business opportunities, as well as starting to sort out their underperforming mortgage lending businesses. Volumes are likely to shrink.

How times have changed. Only three years ago, any foreign investor planning to come to Indonesia would have been delighted to receive an appointment list featuring the following names: Bob Hasan, minister of trade and industry, Ginandjar Kartasasmita, co-ordinating minister for economics and finance, and Ali Wardhana, economic adviser to then president Suharto. If he also managed to see Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, the president's daughter, he would probably have been immediately ready to sign on the dotted line.

Credit default swaps have proved a popular derivatives instrument with banks and other credit investors, but one possible trigger for default – the restructuring of a bond or loan – has cast uncertainty over the market. It is possible that liquidity might be damaged by the proliferation of different classes of instruments.

Ruben Vardanian, president of Russia’s leading broker Troika Dialog, talks about the changing structure and behaviour of Russia’s companies and investment opportunities in them.