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Is news and trading organization chief Mike Bloomberg set to run for mayor of New York? That's certainly the impression several of his senior staff have given, and Bloomberg himself has made no denial.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the stock markets, the biggest bear on the block is back.

The Financial Services Authority will set up a new market abuse regime next year, but withthe proposals on the table, City lawyers doubt that it will make their lives, and those of their clients, any easier.

CSFB is also the chief suspect in a probe into IPO allocation processes by the Securities and Exchange Commission, one which could shake up the entire industry.

Austria's banks may have had regional expansion thrust upon them, but they have achieved much over the past decade in broadening their franchise, developing retail banking in central and eastern Europe and acting as a bridgehead between transitional economies and the western capital base. Austrian banks reacted very quickly to the opportunities that were opened up in the region as a result of political reform.

Each month since last August, Vladimir Putin’s government has attempted to put in place a new aspect of economic reform. But some problems, notably the banking sector and the entrenched Soviet-style bureaucracy, are particularly intractable.

Emerging market governments were forced to bail out collapsing banking systems at huge public cost following the economic and financial crises of the 1990s and 1980s. Many are now considering setting up deposit insurance systems to bring more transparency and stability to implicit sovereign guarantees for banks. Oddly, in the US, where deposit insurance was first established and whose model emerging markets are often encouraged to follow, deposit insurance is being reconsidered. On its own, it’s no safeguard against banking crises.

Russia’s post-Soviet oil industry was restructured by robber barons who showed a scant regard for minority shareholders and ran their businesses on a shoestring, salting away funds abroad. Now, though, a harder government line and, above all, high oil prices, have encouraged modernization and a desire to please foreign investors

Super idea; shocking timing. The morning Euromoney visited the offices of the New Europe Exchange (Newex), housed in the headquarters of the Wiener Börse, CNBC was reporting once again on the travails of Germany's Neuer Markt and of EMTV in particular. Newex in Vienna cannot, of course, legislate for a German company allegedly fibbing to its shareholders; nor for a share price diving by about 90% from its peak. Nevertheless, it was probably not the most opportune time for Paul Putz, director of business development, to say that Newex wants to be comparable to the Neuer Markt in terms of its transparency and efficiency.

Turning money and small-value payments into digital form doesn’t interest the banks – it’s against their interests and too expensive. Into the vacuum have stepped hundreds of payment schemes, many of them claiming they have found the Holy Grail. These boasts are premature. Some ideas are elegant but don’t have critical mass. Worse still, they rely on those indifferent beasts, the banks. Find your way through the Darwinian jungle with the help of David Shirreff

This one's a tough one.

A wakeup call is hardly ever welcome. Core shareholders of Indian companies are being jolted awake by a hostile predator, a rare event in corporate India. In October, Renaissance Estates, a Delhi-based company owned by Abhishek Dalmia, made an open offer to buy Gesco, a property company owned by the Sheths, a prominent industrialist family with interests in the shipping business. Dalmia had bought up just over 10% of Gesco's shares in the market, and bid for another 45% to gain control from the Sheths who own around 13%.