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The First step in building a strong bank is to have a strong, defined franchise. And each of Singapore’s banks can claim some success in one or two areas. But none has a really strong franchise worthy of a domestic, let alone regional, leader. And this is largely the result of complacent neglect of customer needs.

On a late-January afternoon, a group of settlements clerks, Brady bond traders, inter-dealer brokers, and other footsoldiers of the emerging-markets universe straggled into a small conference room on the 28th floor of JP Morgan Chase in Manhattan.

Elizabeth Horn Ozden talks about technology trends and the Turkish retail market.

The October 2000 privatization of Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) and the company's subsequent blow-out $600 million 10-year global note issue served notice, if any were needed, that HSBC's investment banking operation still dominates the Hong Kong market - the bank was joint lead and joint books on both deals and joint global co-ordinator on the equity transaction, which is also a Euromoney Asian deal of the year (see page 122). Successful deals for PLDT and San Miguel in Philippine pesos, Lekir Bulk Terminals in Malaysian ringgit, Associated Cement in Indian rupees and Anyang-Buchon in Korean won in 2000 showed that the bank was also active in local markets across the region.

he two administrations that succeeded that of Ferdinand Marcos put the Philippines on the road to economic recovery and did their best to wipe out cronyism and corruption. The recently ousted Estrada regime went a long way to reversing their achievements. Maggie Ford reports on the chances of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo restoring reform and removing some of the deep-seated inequalities among Filipinos

Borrower: Vodafone AirTouchType of deal: Two 364-day revolving credits, three-year revolving creditAmount: e30 billionDate: March 2000Bookrunners: Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank/Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs Co-arrangers: ABN Amro, Greenwich NatWest, ING Barings, National Australia Bank, Toronto-Dominion and UBS

In a wide-ranging interview, Supachai Panitchpakdi, Thailand's deputy prime minister and director-general-elect of the WTO, talks about the successes and failures of government strategy in bringing Thailand out of the 1997-98 Asian crisis and assesses the prospects for a successful continuation of the work of the WTO

Application service provision has transformed prospects for suppliers of risk-management software. Systems that smaller corporations would once have found too costly, or too feature-heavy, have become available relatively cheaply and in digestible chunks from ASPs on the internet. Even larger companies can see the advantages of the ASP strategy and it is possible that the model will supersede the installed software approach. Boris Antl and Richard Laden check out what is available and forecast market developments

Olds joined DBS as CEO in mid-1998, the First foreigner to run a Singapore bank. He has since been overseeing a complete overhaul of the bank’s business lines, transforming the institution from the last vestiges of its role as a traditional development bank lending at low margins, to one hoping to dominate at the retail and wholesale level, both in Singapore and Asia-wide.

Head of global markets, Deutsche Bank

Having pursued a dirigiste approach to local non-financial companies in the 1990s, encouraging expansion abroad and regional leadership, the Singapore government has now turned its attention to the banks, urging liberalization, consolidation and outward-looking expansionism. It can't force the banks to do what it wants. But it gets very cross when they don't.