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Economic and competitive pressures facing telecoms operators in Europe and internationally could, in turn, expose the equipment suppliers to heightened credit and legal risk.

A small Andean nation proves that it is possible to successfully restructure a bond issue. And to a great extent, the success of the Ecuador exchange offer was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Kemal Dervis, the new mega-minister of the Turkish economy and former World Bank vice-president, talks about the Turkish economy and the growing sense of imminent change in his country.

Global head of high grade debt capital markets, Bear Stearns

The international strategic investor has become, and will continue to be, the key figure in eastern European privatization. The most effective sales seem to be those that have involved transferring a substantial equity stake to a foreign company.

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.