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Fancy Taif rather than Tenerife for your next summer vacation? Reckon property prices in Riyadh have more upside potential than those in Rome? If so, why not take the next flight to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Although you’ll need a visa, you may soon be able to acquire one without jumping through the tortuous hoops of finding local Saudi sponsors prepared to vouch for your good character. Saudi Arabia, historically fortress-like in its approach to uninvited guests, is starting to open its doors to unlikely visitors. The Kingdom has just passed a new investment law described in a recent report published by the Saudi American Bank (Samba) as a “U-turn away from the old investment system”. It is also gearing up to give foreigners direct exposure to a stock market that has so far been accessible only via a single investment trust and (more recently) mutual funds. New legislation is being prepared that will allow foreign individuals to buy Saudi real estate. And senior Saudi policymakers are even talking seriously about more tourism – not just of the local, regional or religious variety, either. After all, the thinking seems to be, other Gulf economies have seen tourists landing on their shores, and survived. So if western visitors can be persuaded to dress sensibly, and to resist the alcoholic temptations of duty-free shops en route, where is the harm in encouraging a limited number of them to spend their dollars, pounds and euros in the Kingdom?

Abbey National's eye-catching mortgage-backed securitization (MBS) programme has touched a new height with its £2.25 billion ($3.375 billion) Holmes Financing 1, the largest ever securitization of European mortgages. Brian Morrison, the bank's director of treasury services and international, says making the bonds fully SEC registered opens up a vast investor base in the US. "This takes us into a new ball game, which is the really big market," he says.

Author: Amber Pierce The Natural History Museum in London was the setting for Euromoney’s first foray into hosting a dinner for the annual awards for excellence. In all 550 bankers and their entourages turned up on the evening on July 12, several fresh from taking part in the 3.5 mile Chase Challenge run in Battersea Park (at least we hope they were fresh).

Since Bashar al-Assad was elected as president of Syria to succeed his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a surprisingly low 97.29% of the vote - his father pulled in over 99% of the vote when he was re-elected - there have been mutterings that Syria might be looking to open up and reform the country's Wnancial sector. The international banking community, however, seems less than excited and in some cases extremely sceptical.

Author: Gill Baker Thailand has a huge number of debt restructuring cases and non-performing borrowers but they are steadily being dealt with. And the signs are that the authorities are starting to break the back of the problem, although there is still a long way to go.

Author: James Smalhout Those tough guys on the Bank of Japan’s policy board did the right thing in spite of themselves when they met on July 17. The group had been flirting since April with the idea of ending its policy of zero overnight interest rates. The rate first hit zero in February 1999. In the end, they voted not to hike it, but threatened to do exactly that if Japan’s recovery continues much longer. Only the bankruptcy of the Sogo department store a few days earlier made the policy board flinch.

Euromoney takes a look at three publicly available models: PortfolioManager, CreditMetrics, and CreditRisk+.

Big rises for Asian banks reflect not only their gradual recovery from crisis but the scale of the hammering they took a few years back. Many are still regarded by analysts as weak though in the longer run their position could be stronger than those banks which have not yet been forced to reform. This year’s top 250 emerging market banks, prepared by Moody’s Investor Services, shows the considerable changes that are taking place in the sector. Keri Geiger reports

There are no easy mergers, as Dresdner Bank proved again last month in its failed link-up with Commerzbank. But both this attempt and that between Dresdner and Deutsche Bank were particularly difficult, and their failure ought to be no surprise. Both were defensive deals, aimed at cutting costs and exiting unprofitable businesses – not least retail banking.

Even the whiff of a country’s likely exit from eurozone membership could cause a run on that country’s banks and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is the logical conclusion of an exercise that few within the eurozone, or even outside it, dare to rehearse. It could destroy the euroland banking system. But the European Commission’s own president, Romano Prodi, has twice raised the taboo subject of a euro exit. The intellectual challenge of predicting how things would work out won’t go away. Brian Kettell takes us through a hypothetical French exit.

Author: David Roche Bank of Japan governor Masaru Hayami missed a step when the bankruptcy of the Japanese retailer, Sogo, stopped him ending the zero interest-rate policy (ZIRP) at the BoJ’s July meeting. But he looks determined to end ZIRP within the next two months.

The recent improvement in performance at Phillips & Drew will provoke mixed reactions in Tony Dye, according to those who know him best.