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Could El Salvador, a country of 6 million people, be about to steal a march on its larger Latin American neighbours?

The prospect of sovereign bond defaults in emerging markets has focused attention on the legal documentation. Christopher Stoakes explains why.

Issuer: Jazztel

The battles rage for Telecom Italia, Société Générale and Gucci. Europeans have learnt aggressive US-style tactics. Optimists think corporate Europe has woken up after trailing the US for years. But these mega deals are driven by clan rivalry and gigantism, rather than efficiency.

A revolution in securities settlement will make Emu and Y2K look like child's play. And it will be the death knell of custody as we know it. Increasingly, custodians see their business as information, not safe-keeping. Meanwhile the consolidation continues. James Rutter reports.

The pie may be getting smaller but the top players are taking bigger slices. However, as Jack Dyson reports, the largest foreign-exchange firms are having to work ever harder to carve out a point of difference in a mature market with thin margins. In our eagerly-awaited annual foreign-exchange poll, Citigroup stays ahead of Deutsche by a whisker. Research by Rebecca Cicolecchia.

In the eurozone big is beautiful. The potential three-way merger of Banque Nationale de Paris, Société Générale and Paribas is just the latest example of the consolidation that will transform Europe's fragmented and largely unsophisticated banking industry. National borders and regulations have become irrelevant more quickly than anyone had predicted, leaving the way open for huge intra-market and cross-border tie-ups. But as banking goes the way of auto manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, what role is left for the smaller institutions - the regional specialists and the boutiques?

FX Poll: Life after execution

Custody: Custody is dead, long live custody

FX Poll: Life after execution

Have you been wondering what, if anything, can cause bank stocks to fall? Last year's crisis managed to do it, but now it would appear to be little more than a temporary blip. And in the US at least, the first quarter of 1999 has been a profits bonanza for most of the banks, even for the likes of JP Morgan, which had been stuck in the return-on-equity doldrums for several years.

We know that the cloggies of ABN Amro and ING Barings are deadly rivals the world over and eat each other's client lists for breakfast. In Almaty, Kazakhstan, that competition extends to the bankers' leisure time. And these aren't even Dutchmen, they're Kazakhs. They issue mad challenges to each other: downhill racing, skeet shooting, computer warfare, it's all in a day's fun.