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Zambia's economy remains as dependent as ever on copper, and there is no immediate prospect that the current depressed price of this commodity will improve. Zambia also desperately needs currency stability. The kwacha has fallen by more than 70% against the dollar in the past two years and interest rates are over 30%. Helen Henton reports

With the evolution of risk management, we're learning more about aggregation, liquidity risk, and pairing assets with liabilities. Result: banks will de-lever; mutual funds will take on more credit and insurance risk, writes Robert Gumerlock

Bank atlas 1999: The world's biggest banks

Over 200 clients of Barclays trooped out to see the US premiere of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant's film Notting Hill., an event sponsored by the UK bank.

For international equity investors these days, working without an array of technological equipment is inconceivable. When Art Lerner began actively to invest in 1969, though, his main tool was the telephone. Even then it could be frustrating. "Back when I started, the companies we visited were usually shareholder unfriendly. There was very little information or research material available - some annual reports didn't even have an English version. You could ring up a company in, say, the Netherlands and have the CFO say to you: 'What do you care for? We run the company, we make money, and that's that.' Of course, they were salaried staff, and had no incentive to improve the share price."

This is a brief and highly selective history of the international financial markets over the past 30 years. Who were the heroes, who were the villains and who made a difference? It's the story of hopeful financial centres that flourished, showed promise but ultimately lost out to London, of banks and bankers with vaulting ambition who made it big, came a cropper or laid waste the markets around them. It's a story of creativity, excitement, success and spectacular failure. By David Shirreff.