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Central America: A whole new way of thinking

What does the birth of a big new capital market in euros mean for the world's existing pool of liquidity, the US market? So far, few US borrowers have issued in euros, but they, along with American investors, are keeping a keen eye on the development of the market

The contrasting economic fortunes of the core of Europe and those at the edge of, or outside, the euro area persist. The consensus view has been that euroland economic growth will begin to accelerate this year and that there will be a slowdown (or even recession in the case of the UK) in the periphery.

At the unlikely venue of Durbanville racecourse in autumnal South Africa, a little-known four-year-old pipped Like A Rock by a length to win the Maiden Plate over 1,200 metres on April 28.

During the past few months we have been swamped with gadgets incorporating the euro symbol. All the major European banks have been distributing euro-inspired watches, clocks, calculators and even food items to their main clients and their employees to celebrate the birth of the new currency.

Reflexologists, iridologists and physiotherapists are not the analysts usually associated with Warburg Dillon Read, but a platoon of them was hired in to "destress" the bank's London workforce. Over the three-day event, all but 40 of the bank's staff turned up to get their cholesterol and blood pressure tested, and to take in advice on alternative therapies.

BEST JAPANESE BORROWER

The quest to find the best-guarded bank in Central America begins in Costa Rica. Raids on branches have become a problem in this traditionally peaceful, unarmed society. Crédito Agrícola de Cartago has taken on a nervous-looking youth with a rifle. Few such worries at the central bank, where the security guard is armed only with a pistol and is too busy chatting with the shoe-shiners to notice me sneaking past.

In his state-of-the-nation address last month the president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, was full of free-market fire. He berated the assembled lawmakers for the slow pace of economic reforms in what is the most populous of the five Central Asian states and called on them to to push forward with political and economic reforms. He then went on to make what were some of the most radical statements of his career, promising to finally allow convertibility of the soum, the national currency, by 2000. Among the foreign investor community in Tashkent the speech was met by a round of yawns. They had heard it all before. The investment climate in Uzbekistan has been getting slowly worse over the past three years with the government, all the time, tightening control of the few foreign companies still sticking it out in Tashkent. The Russian crisis has hit the Uzbek economy hard. Russia used to account for nearly half of all this cash-strapped country's exports.

Iceland's financial markets will barely be recognizable by the end of the year, such is the pace of change. Having opened its markets to foreign investment, the country is now pressing ahead with privatization. Rebecca Bream reports

Banking in Indonesia has a split personality. In the retail sector foreign banks are introducing state-of-the-art services and buying up bargains among local banks to expand their networks. Local commercial banks are in a much gloomier situation. The costs of recapitalization are rising, influential creditors are resisting attempts to restructure and the bankruptcy court has proved ineffective. Maggie Ford reports