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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.

Paul Volcker, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board from 1979 to 1987, chairman of Wolfensohn & Co from 1988 to 1996, now 71, looks back over 30 years at a world banking system which "lurched from one crisis to another" from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, and a global financial system which is "still pretty creaky". He fears for small, vulnerable countries, which are like rowboats in an ocean of volatility. He talked to David Shirreff.

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.

Lebanese banks have lived well by investing in high-yielding treasury bonds. But with government debt issuance and interest rates set to fall, banks are looking for new ways to make money. Charles Olivier reports

Bank atlas 1999: The world's biggest banks

Two months ago, Stephen Saali had plans. The bank of which he is president, Republic New York Corporation, had been through a rough six months. Republic, which is ultra-conservative in its approach and proud of it, had tarnished its image with a $200 million loss betting on Russian treasury GKOs during the Russian crisis, and reported a third-quarter loss as a result.

This is a brief and highly selective history of the international financial markets over the past 30 years. Who were the heroes, who were the villains and who made a difference? It's the story of hopeful financial centres that flourished, showed promise but ultimately lost out to London, of banks and bankers with vaulting ambition who made it big, came a cropper or laid waste the markets around them. It's a story of creativity, excitement, success and spectacular failure. By David Shirreff.

Banking in Indonesia has a split personality. In the retail sector foreign banks are introducing state-of-the-art services and buying up bargains among local banks to expand their networks. Local commercial banks are in a much gloomier situation. The costs of recapitalization are rising, influential creditors are resisting attempts to restructure and the bankruptcy court has proved ineffective. Maggie Ford reports

Australia: After the gold rush

The race towards a pan-European exchange speeded up on March 11 when Borsa Italiana, the Italian stock market, agreed to cooperate with the Paris and Swiss bourses in their effort to create a single market for the new century.

The volume of money raised by European private equity funds continues to grow. Much of that money is flowing in the belief that continental Europe is close to developing the sort of buy-out and start-up culture which has long produced spectacular returns for venture capitalists in the US. In late March Apax Partners closed a €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) pan-European fund. It has the distinction of being the largest private equity fund for Europe denominated in the new currency, but it joins an already large pool of funds, much of it denominated in dollars, which is dedicated for investment in private European companies.