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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

Monumentum aere perennius - a monument more lasting than bronze. That is probably the last piece of Latin readers of Euromoney will have to endure outside the legal page - just one, small difference between the worlds of 1969 and 1999. When Euromoney was founded in June of that year, every senior banker in London, certainly, and probably Frankfurt, Paris and Milan too would have read the works of Horace - the poet who believed his work would last longer than the statues of Rome's dignitaries.

The credit market in Eurobonds is becoming deep and varied. For the first time, corporates - including lower-rated borrowers - are driving the market. Securitization and hybrid debt are taking off as well. But which firms are best placed to sell these products to European investors? Marcus Walker reports.

It's one of the most famous addresses in the world. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective hero Sherlock Holmes had his home at 221b Baker Street in London and for many tourists travelling to London a visit is high on the list.

Given the number of banking and commercial agreements written under English law, bankers and corporate lawyers need to be aware of new litigation rules in the UK. By Christopher Stoakes

Issuer: Hutchison Whampoa

Over the years Euromoney has reported on the events that shook the market, described the innovations that went on to become standard market features and profiled the most influential individuals and institutions in the world of finance. We also dropped a few clangers. Michael Peterson spent an afternoon trawling through the archives in the dusty vaults of Euromoney HQ and offers a selection of judgements and predictions, some wildly wrong, some amazingly prescient.

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.

HSBC faces a bizarre lawsuit over the rebranding of subsidiaries. With 80% of the new HSBC signs already up in the UK outside former Midland branches, a rival financial institution, HFC Bank, has begun litigation against HSBC claiming it is damaging its franchise and stealing its hard-earned brand name.

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."