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Like most emerging markets Argentina is unused to hostile takeover bids and certainly not those on the scale of Repsol's bid for YPF. To some analysts the takeover is a case of a company with a poor investment record in Latin America -- Spain's oil company Repsol - gaining control of a well-managed firm - YPF has been remodeled since privatization with a clear strategy and strong balance sheet. They warn of the dangers of leveraged takeovers.

Portugal: Bigger should be even better

Central America: A whole new way of thinking

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.

The contrasting economic fortunes of the core of Europe and those at the edge of, or outside, the euro area persist. The consensus view has been that euroland economic growth will begin to accelerate this year and that there will be a slowdown (or even recession in the case of the UK) in the periphery.

Issuer: Hutchison Whampoa

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

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.

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.

Reflexologists, iridologists and physiotherapists are not the analysts usually associated with Warburg Dillon Read, but a platoon of them was hired in to "destress" the bank's London workforce. Over the three-day event, all but 40 of the bank's staff turned up to get their cholesterol and blood pressure tested, and to take in advice on alternative therapies.

BEST JAPANESE BORROWER

What does the birth of a big new capital market in euros mean for the world's existing pool of liquidity, the US market? So far, few US borrowers have issued in euros, but they, along with American investors, are keeping a keen eye on the development of the market