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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.

A cooling in relations between Sergei Dubinin, former governor of the Russian central bank and now deputy chairman of Gazprom, and the EBRD lies behind the very public dispute between the bank and the management of Russia’s largest company.

For all the talk of US slowdowns, Argentine crises and prudent spending-policies, there was little evidence of belt-tightening at the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Santiago in March.

Egypt has weathered the economic storms of the past two years and looks set for steady growth over the next decade. But tough decisions must be taken on the exchange rate and privatization if the country is to achieve its long-term potential.

Evgeny Shvidler, president of Russia’s sixth largest oil company Sibneft, talks about corporate governance and strategy.

Turkey’s idiosyncratic form of financial engineering involved the creation of a web of corruption linking the governing elite, through the state banks, to its cronies. The private banks fed well off the massive government debt this generated. Then, in February, they hit the wall in a liquidity crisis that lopped more than 30% off the value of the Turkish lira.

Euromoney polled investors at 3,000 investing institutions in 31 countries, asking them to rank the individuals and teams whose credit research they rate most highly. The response was four times that of last year, with nearly 340 firms replying to our questionnaire. The winners were two bulge-bracket US firms and two of the largest European banks.

Indonesia is still trying to get back on its feet after a crippling economic downturn. As if that is not hard enough, the country is also looking to make the transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. The currency weakened again last month and the ratings agencies are nervous. Against the odds, Indonesia’s crisis management skills are improving.