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Japan's Ministry of Finance building has the feel of a British public school, and its occupants consider themselves the real rulers of Japan.

Best tech acquiror Company: JDS Uniphase Deal: acquisition of E-Tek; acquisition of SDL Announced: January 19th (E-Tek); July 10th (SDL) Size: $15.5 billion (E-Tek); $41 billion (SDL) Advisors: Thomas Weisel Partners (for JDS in E-Tek deal); Goldman Sachs (for E-Tek); Thomas Weisel Partners (for SDL); Banc of America Securities and CIBC World Markets (for JDS in SDL deal)

The abrupt resignation of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's president, John Mack, is the most serious yet in a series of setbacks over the past six months for a firm once seemingly immune to crises.

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.

It was a volatile year in the capital markets, as the telecoms sector clearly showed but still there were standout deals amid the chaos. Antony Currie, Anja Helk, Peter Lee, Julian Marshall, Jennifer Morris and Felix Salmon look back over 2000.

At worst, running a restructuring operation in Thailand can be a life-threatening métier, but its practitioners face a host of other obstacles, not least getting paid. Paradoxically, Thais are also seen as being too gentle and non-confrontational to buckle down seriously to the business of extracting debt from each other. On the buying side of the business, major players such as Lehman Brothers claim to be making a fair return on the distressed debt they have acquired.

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.

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.

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

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.

Russia never seems to play by the same rules as the rest of us. Its macroeconomic indicators for 2000 were the country's best in 30 years. The economy grew by somewhere between 7% and 8%; tax reforms - part of a wide-ranging economic reform plan - helped the government record a fiscal surplus of 3% of GDP, after many years of high deficits; the strong oil price helped Russia to rebuild its foreign currency reserves to $28 billion. Leading Russian companies took steps to improve their dismal record of abusing minority shareholder rights, under pressure from a government that understands the urgent need to attract foreign investment. The government itself concluded a renegotiation of commercial debts with the London club of private sector creditors in August 2000.

Thai Petrochemical Industry is Thailand’s biggest restructuring headache. And if it is going to pull itself out of trouble, its managers claim that it needs access to large amounts of working capital. But that is not forthcoming.