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Just suppose the World Bank's major shareholders decided they could use their money better elsewhere. Who would get the mandate to unwind or sell the bank's loan portfolio and how would it be done? One consultant, who prefers not to be named, suggested this as a hypothetical exercise, but colleagues feared it would be biting the hand that feeds them.

Management sages are rife but the office is an unenlightened place. Bob McGinnis, head of consumer asset-backed debt at Greenwich Capital in the US, complained to Euromoney that the French windows in his office didn't open and he couldn't practise his golf swing. When his comments found their way into print he was deluged by self-righteous colleagues and clients deploring his waste of valuable time contemplating leisure. For them the best office is one with no windows and the employees locked inside.

Philosophers have debated ethics for thousands of years and come up with more questions than answers. But now a super-smart Swiss asset manager has launched an ethical fund using a quantitative model to determine how naughty or nice companies are. Their efforts may not impress followers of Plato, Kant and Hume but will they persuade socially-concerned investors to part with their cash?

Deutsche Bank speaker Rolf Breuer recently boasted that his bank's value-at-risk (VAR) models were the only ones in Germany to be approved by the supervisors in Berlin.

A new advisory science has been born this year in Europe: how to launch and defend hostile bids. The aggression and free-flowing finance are straight out of America, but the old continent's politics add an extra level of difficulty. The latest landmark battle, following the struggles for Telecom Italia, Gucci and Société Générale, is raging in the French oil sector. TotalFina's raid on Elf Aquitaine, and Elf's counter-attack, highlight once again the primacy of politics in shaping French business. The battle also provides Europe-wide lessons for the M&A tactical manual.

Credit becomes a special case

Meet the new breed of Asian banker - the ones who survived the crisis and are now able to put their hard-learned lessons into practice. They are leading the way into a new era of openness and transparency in Asia.

Fringe protesters at the IMF/World Bank annual meetings are nothing new. But once they could be easily dismissed as Utopians or religious nutters not worth taking seriously. No longer.

Living with an image problem

Revamping the US equities market

Last month Front End had a little jest at the expense of one of the runners in the Chase Corporate Challenge fun run recently held in London's Battersea Park. One brave soul, you may recall, was spotted heading for the finishing line in a Yamaichi T-shirt.

Revamping the US equities market