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Efficient linkages between stock markets should eventually enable global investors to trade shares easily on local markets removing any need to use such instruments as depositary receipts. But such linkages are far from complete. American investors still prefer to deal in dollar-denominated paper. Foreign companies are building up their ADR programmes as a currency for US acquisitions. With the trade in ADRs in 2000 exceeding $1 trillion by September, and expected to top $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, the depositary receipt market looks set to prosper.

Vice president, operations, Atlas Ventures

Even a year ago US bulge-bracket firms refused to acknowledge that a foreign bank could come within striking distance of having a decent US bond business. That's no longer the case.

The potential for internet growth in Latin American remains among the highest in the world, though that is not sufficient to support large numbers of start-up companies. Financing is hard to come by in both the public and private equity markets. But Latin American internet companies are about to show the rest of the world where the new economy is heading. The convergence of internet, traditional media and telecom businesses is at hand.

In e-finance developments the day of the independent entrepreneur capturing a chunk of the market is over – and maybe the notion was never a runner. Banks and other financial institutions now dominate the e-finance cutting edge through direct and indirect investment. Britt Tunick reports

According to Mark Gormley, a partner with Capital Z Partners, very few venture capital Wrms focus on e-Wnance and, apart from the securities Wrms and banks themselves, Capital Z is the only one in Europe that deals exclusively with it.

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.