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Bad vibes in Bishopsgate

People: Clare Marshall, former treasurer, Export Development Corporation

Hedging equity risk is now possible through the Athens Derivatives Exchange (Adex) with its futures contract based on the FTSE-ASE 20 Index covering blue chip stocks. Options and bond futures are on their way as are tie-ups with other European exchanges and regional indices. Adex chairman Panayotis Alexakis, a finance professor at Athens University and a business consultant, explains how he believes the market will develop. By Michael Peterson.

Asia 100 1999 - Cleaning the hives

Rumours about an impending sale of Warburg Dillon Read have been circulating for over a year, ever since more derivatives losses were announced following the merger with UBS. This year they have resurfaced, despite a healthy performance so far (WDR accounted for 30% of UBS's pre-tax profits for the first nine months of the year, bringing in $1.34 billion). Chase Manhattan, which lacks an equity operation, and Salomon Smith Barney, which lacks a significant European equities operation, have both been touted as buyers.

The United States Senate confirmed Comptroller of the Currency John D Hawke, Jr in October for a five-year term. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) within the US treasury charters and regulates national banks, a total of approximately 2,400 institutions, including most large banks in the US as well as 59 federal branches and agencies of foreign banks in the US. But the OCC appears to be losing regulatory turf under the new modernization bill which grants authority to the Federal Reserve to regulate new financial holding companies.

People: Mark Collier, Chairman and CEO, Investia

For five decades, a small Milan bank has wielded power over Italian finance and industry. It has anointed and toppled bosses, fostered and blocked mergers, and defeated every attack on its influence. Its secretive machinations have infuriated supporters of transparent markets. In recent years, Mediobanca was presumed in decline as the world around it modernized. But in 1999 the firm struck back, steering the consolidation of Italian finance in its favour with help from its patriarch, Enrico Cuccia. Yet even in its year of triumph, Mediobanca faces a worsening internal split: between an old guard obsessed with power and intrigue, and a young investment-banking team who want to be less Cesare Borgia, more Goldman Sachs. Marcus Walker reports

If you ever forget - or never knew - what being a banking lawyer is all about, there's a book that will make it all horribly clear, says Christopher Stoakes

Jürgen Karcher, Managing director and country head of fixed income, Germany, Salomon Smith Barney

Joining the Wall Street party

Why US firms fear FASB's rule 133