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With foreign investment in France burgeoning, corporate governance had to catch up with international standards, borrowing from Anglo-Saxon ideas and practice. Marc Viénot, former head of Socété Générale, has taken on the mission of converting French companies. His reports laid down key guidelines that many companies now accept. But there have been some laggards and, to Viénot’s regret, the government wants to impose legal obligations.

On March 20, the London financial futures and options exchange, Liffe, introduced a new product called Swapnote. This swap futures contract, the first of its kind, is referenced against the European interbank swap curve instead of the government bond curve. This means that it more accurately reflects the exposures that bondholders experience. It is available at two-, five- and 10-year maturities.

Merrill Lynch Investment Managers has been turned around from a poorly organized, underperforming, insular group overly focused on value investing and distribution to US retail. Now its performance looks strong, and it has a better balance of customers and investment styles. Even its acquisition of the troubled Mercury Asset Management seems finally to be paying dividends. Much of the credit goes to Jeff Peek, who took over in December 1997, bringing a breath of fresh air and a slew of judicious hires. He’s done so well that he’s in the running to head Merrill Lynch one day.

Minority investors in Russian companies have got their act together. Before the 1998 crisis foreigners were making enormous returns from a soaring stock market. The few that bought into problem companies, and saw their investments diluted, won the sympathy of the market but little else.

The senior Botswanan banker who told Euromoney last year that he didn't care what rating Botswana got, as long as it was better than South Africa's, has finally got his wish.

As the European credit market has grown in the past two years, banks have struggled to position themselves to capitalize on the opportunity. In a bid to win much more lucrative underwriting business than high-grade, frequent issuers ever offered, they have poured money into credit research, importing staff from the US, where credit analysis is a long-familiar concept, and plundering the rating agencies for talent. But the response from investors has been mixed. While sell-side credit analysts may offer a convenient shortcut to essential facts and figures about a company, fund managers are quick to highlight their lack of independence. In a volatile credit market, buyers of credit bonds are doing more of their own analysis in-house. Still, brokers insist that this doesn’t mean their role is under threat.

A little more than three months after Greece's entry into Emu, the country finds out that eurozone membership does not guarantee immunity from financial and other crises raging in neighbouring countries, such as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. However, membership has helped reduce, if not eliminate, the sensitivity of its bond and equity markets to events in nearby emerging markets.

Understanding sovereign risk is the key to investing in central Europe, where foreign investors have an important role to play, says Ashmore Investment Management’s Jerome Booth

HypoVereinsbank’s decision to combine its mortgage banks under one roof has revived the long-running debate about the validity of the specialist bank principle - the foundation of Germany’s system of mortgage banks.

David Komansky has found an innovative new way of getting analysts on his side - he insults them. The Merrill Lynch chief executive was taking questions from the floor after delivering his speech at the firm's second annual investor day conference in New York last month.

In the first quarter of this year, the US Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by 150 basis points. But Nasdaq is down 25%, most European equity markets have fallen 15% to 20% and even the Dow, which had been flat for two years, is now off 14% for the year.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, America's two largest agency debt issuers, have now implemented the latest steps in their voluntary six-point programme agreed with Congress last year to reassure clients and the public of their safety and soundness.