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Issuer: Dow Chemical Amount: $300 million Type of issue: Online domestic US corporate bond auction Launch date: August 15

It has been a busy year for presidential and parliamentary elections - and coup attempts. Throw in worker unrest (Peru, Ecuador, Ghana), violent separatism in Indonesia and looming emerging market elections and it would be wise to expect big changes in Euromoney’s first Country Risk ranking in 2001. Keri Geiger reports

Latin America’s banks have mostly managed to weather the region’s economic slump. Relative currency movements account in large part for changes in the Latin 100 rankings since last year’s snapshot was taken a month before Brazil’s currency devaluation. Despite shaky asset quality no Mexican bank listed in the tables rises fewer than two places. Argentina also makes a good showing as the one-for-one dollar peg helps to shore up balance sheets. Brazil’s banks are the region’s biggest, though returns are distorted by the exceptional interest rate levels of March 1999. Data from Moody’s.

By most economic and development measures, China would seem to have taken a firm lead over India in the great race between these two Asian contenders to become regional and global economic superpowers. Yet India, despite its slower economic growth, its poorer yet faster-increasing population and its confused politics, now has thriving new-economy sectors.

Some emerging markets have found the route to salvation, others are a whisker from damnation. By Michael Peterson

“Banks will need stronger cost discipline and controls to preserve margins”

Other central bank governors may lead a sedate life, contemplating the economy through half open eyes and jumping into action once or twice a year to notch the prime rate up or down by 25 basis points before they go back to watching the fiscal grass grow. Not Turkey’s Gazi Ercel. Metin Munir reports.

The last of Poland's large commercial banks to be privatized could prove to be the most troublesome.

When hurricane Mitch washed away the bridges, houses and crops of Honduras two years ago, many of its banks remained open and the staff at the finance ministry came into work. The authorities wanted to give a message: business as usual. The economy survived the devastation and recovery is now under way. But Honduras had to seek help from the multilaterals and the Paris Club. And that comes at a price, reports Nick Kochan

Asia’s equity markets have seen their fair share of triumphs and disasters in the past 12 months, with technology stocks still baffling market watchers in some markets and seducing them in others.

A run on Romania’s biggest bank was stopped in its tracks. The episode highlights nervousness in the system as banks are being readied for sale. Some on the inside say the situation’s not so bad as it looks and that the supervisors are getting tougher. But foreigners are still asking a host of questions, as Erik D’Amato reports.