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Issuer: Barclays BankAmount: e850 millionType of issue: tier-one Reserve Capital InstrumentsLaunched: April 12Book runner: Barclays Capital

One banker described Hanvit Bank as an "ambassador for Korea" after the successful raising of $850 million through a subordinated debt deal in February. As it turns out, Hanvit may be the ambassador for the entire region as international investors show new interest in the potential of the Asian markets.

Once branded the internet dullard, Merrill Lynch is on the offensive. More than a decade after the brokerage firm bought a bank in Utah, it’s launching a nationwide retail banking operation, based on the internet, and paying money-market rates on insured deposits. That, and its plans for a banking and investment-services joint-venture with HSBC, may take its head off the merger block. Antony Currie reports

Most financial institutions see the internet as the future for distribution and trading of financial products, mostly for retail. But web-based products are being developed to provide a competitive advantage in far more complex businesses. The entire landscape of the wholesale financial services industry is set to change as a result.

Malaysia seems to have recovered better from the Asian crisis than some other countries in the region, not least because of the currency control policies that were introduced. Confidence was shaken a little last month by the volatility in US markets, but the fundamentals still appear to be sound.

Euromoney polled heads of Eurobond and government bond trading, asking them to nominate the top three houses at trading bonds in specific markets. This year, the survey was revised to reflect the recent structural changes on many bond trading desks. We received 52 replies in total.

Economies in the Middle East are in good shape for forthcoming bond issues, though some sovereign issuers have been deterred by the spread on Qatar's 1999 Eurobond. Lack of sovereign benchmarks has, until now, held back corporate issues but that may soon change.

At the beginning of 1999, so the story goes, corporate Europe suddenly got religion about shareholder value. In the wake of the introduction of the euro, a wave of corporate restructuring swept the continent. Lured by growing investor appetite for credit - and with a little nudging from their bankers - Europe's companies plunged into the bond markets. The result was an explosion of corporate bond issuance.

French brokers, like those in other single-currency zone countries, are gradually adapting to a pan-European market. While investors are holding on to domestic equities, they are also boosting portfolios with other European stocks.

Latvia is small. Latvia is very small. Latvia is so tiny, in fact, that you may have trouble getting a price for the Latvian Eurobond or Hansabank, the largest bank in the Baltics and number one equity issue on the Riga stock exchange. If you ring up the London switchboard of any mega-global-super bank claiming to make a market in everything from options on timber futures to weather derivatives for Lesotho, and then ask for the Latvian desk, after a few minutes on hold you'll wind up speaking to PR. And then explaining where Latvia is located.

The alchemists sought to transform base metals into gold, but the IMF seems bent on turning ingots into dross. When president Bill Clinton's millennial offer to forgive the debts of the globe's poorest nations was blocked by mining interest protests against IMF gold sales, US Treasury strategists stayed up late over the Bunsen burners. Had the accounting subterfuge they cooked up to fulfil their promise been designed by one of the big five auditing firms for a megabank client, the US Treasury itself, the Securities&Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve would have been lining up to clamp on the handcuffs.

The initial public oVering of T-Online, a German company owned primarily by Deutsche Telekom, provided some respite for a turbulent technology market when its shares climbed 39% on their Wrst day of trading.