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The Nuovo Mercato is "a new market for small and medium-size companies [that] can help to develop a real market culture in our country." Thus Massimo Capuano, chief executive officer of Borsa Italiana - the company that runs the Italian stock exchange, introducing Italy's new equity market. The Nuovo Mercato - literally the New Market - will be the Italian equivalent of Germany's Neuer Markt and France's Nouveau Marché: a stock market especially designed to give high-growth companies access to funding.

The problem with anything Japanese is that it all depends on your point of view. Three Japanese groups fail with more than $10.4 billion worth of debts. Tokai bank has just announced that it will forgive more than $3 billion worth of debts. Shareholders - other banks - in LTCB will get nothing from last year's forced nationalization. And Nomura - once the flagship of Japan's financial services industry - has recently announced losses of $4.6 billion, has been downgraded to junk status and has said goodbye to Max Chapman, the chairman and chief executive of Nomura Securities International.

Turkey: Sustaining the unsustainable

Why has the merger of Chase and Chemical succeeded while others have not?

The big thrust of privatization in Spain is almost over and domestic and foreign investment banks must trim their strategies to cope. Most are confident that private and family-owned businesses seeking listings will provide lucrative business but competition will be fierce. Jules Stewart reports.

Turkey: Sustaining the unsustainable

Talks on the restructuring of GKOs - Russian treasury bills on which the government defaulted last August - have once more been cast into disarray just days before a deadline imposed by the Russian finance ministry was due to expire.

Adventurous investment banks are starting to look beyond central Europe's emerged "golden triangle" - Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary - to opportunities in such countries as Bulgaria and the Slovak Republic. By Alex Mathias

Bond Trading Poll: Emu shuffles the rankings

To paraphrase American satirist PJ O'Rourke, if you buy yourself something with your own money, odds are that you'll spend time making sure you get exactly what you want. If you spend your own money on something for someone else, you won't be quite as careful. But if you're given money by one person and told to buy something for someone else, you're likely not to be careful at all.

Brazil's economy is weak but the banks are strong. That is the popular belief among investors. The banks are well-capitalized and liquid, with high profits. Brazil's banking sector has been restructured and balance sheets cleaned up. While investors fret over the government's failure to sort out public finances they can rest assured that the financial system is solid. Right?

Never one to rest too long on my posterior, I jet in from Hong Kong to Sydney, and arrive rather the worse for Qantas at the airport. A chirpy customs man asks my occupation. When told "journalist" he asks what I intend to write about in Australia. When I reply "financial markets" he says: "Well that'll be pretty dull for you." This does not bode well.