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Until recently, corporates were hard-pressed to identify the individual M&A advisers most likely to guide them through a transaction or help them head one off. Traditional league tables, reckons mergermarket.com, just don’t fill this bill. The established league table providers, taking their cue from some banks’ desire to curb the cult of personality, beg to differ. So who measures M&A advisers best?

"We've caught a cold but it's a long way from pneumonia," says José Sevilla, head of the Latin American financial management division of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya (BBVA), Spain's largest banking group. Sevilla was assessing the impact on the bank of its exposure to Argentina.

More than a decade after Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister of India, launched its belated bold strides to take the economy into the 20th century, the world's second biggest country and biggest democracy has a long way to go even to get into gear to catch up with China, let alone with the industrialized world. The mess of the privatization plans is merely one indicator of the country's problems.

In May 1999 Euromoney tipped El Salvador to become the first Latin American country since Panama in 1903 to give up its own currency and adopt the dollar. In fact, the central American republic was pipped at the post by crisis-torn Ecuador, which formally dollarized its economy this year.

Hong Kong is undergoing a seismic cultural shift with the introduction of its compulsory savings scheme, the Mandatory Provident Fund. Its arrival will boost the local fund management industry through a consistent inflow of funds which employers and workers are legally obliged to maintain. Other Asian countries, most notably China, are scrutinizing its implementation to see what aspect of the Hong Kong model they can adopt. Julian Marshall reports

Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt would have had a field day with the US election. Much of his work dealt with man watching as blind fate wreaked havoc with his plans.

Next year the Middle East's sovereign bond markets look likely to expand in scope, with new issuers coming in longer maturities and larger amounts

When it comes to floating state-owned enterprises, the Chinese authorities have learnt fast. More discriminating in what they offer to the market, they have also recognized that pricing is crucial and that investors are attracted by big issues because of the liquidity they provide. For their part, western banks leading issues have learnt - sometimes the hard way - that the Chinese are increasingly choosy about who they work with. That doesn't make bankers any the less determined to establish a presence in a massive market that is at last beginning to restructure.

It's hard to imagine a worse news flow for markets. As I write, the US is without a winner in the presidential elections. The lawyers argue in the courts about whether various counties in Florida can conduct manual recounts. And people spend their time giving opinions on chads - those little round bits of paper hanging by a thread from the punch hole on a Florida ballot paper.

Issuer: Government of Malaysia Amount: €650m Type of issue: Eurobond Date of issue: November 16

A walk around Chicago can be a rewarding experience. It has its skyscrapers like most other US cities, including the tallest, the Sears Tower. But it also has stunning main shopping streets and there's a deceptive and disarmingly quiet pace to life in the Loop, the main financial district. Then there's the city's reputation as the home of blues music, and its overall location on the shores of Lake Michigan. All this gives the city a more balanced air than the bustling, cramped streets of Manhattan.

Few in the financial sector would doubt the benefits of having an independent central bank, where governors are free from interference or threats and responsible for targeting inflation, controlling money supply and interest rates and supervising the sector, without needing to heed advice from political masters.