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The love affair between increasingly yield-hungry European investors and corporate borrowers is becoming ever more passionate. Their sweet nothings include high yield bonds, convertibles, exchangeables and dealer remarketable securities. Rebecca Bream checks out some of the hottest dates in the market.

Pensions are the greatest pyramid scheme ever, argues Arnab Banerji. As Europe turns from unfunded to funded schemes it will need the higher returns that only emerging markets can provide.

A troubled government that swaps domestic debt for foreign currency-denominated debt would seem to be inviting catastrophe - isn't that what dumped Asia in the mire? But Russia has done exactly that. Alex Jurshevski argues that this and other measures are just what Russia needs.

InterSec 250: The changing face of asset management

InterSec 250: The changing face of asset management

Our annual survey of asset managers outside the US, in conjunction with InterSec Research Corporation, shows the continuing dominance of Japanese and Swiss institutions. But industry consolidation is propelling firms such as Credit Suisse and Zurich up the rankings. Report by Jim Sirius.

The clearing system grinds to a halt and the single European currency collapses under the weight of Italian debt. But that was 1570. This time, argues Ronald Layard-Liesching, monetary union will bring devastating capital flows, bank failures and regional recession. And that's just the good news.

The news of an alliance between the sleepy London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse, its biggest European rival, surprised the market. Eventually the partners hope to bring in other bourses. That pleased the Dutch but the French felt slighted - they'd been courting the Germans too. The devil will be in the detail: the Germans let slip that they thought their settlement system would win out, much to the chagrin of London's CrestCo and the LSE's derivatives counterpart Liffe. So will it be London-on-the-Main or Frankfurt an der Themse? Antony Currie reports.

So far, Australia has emerged from the Asia crisis remarkably unscathed. In fact, it seems like just the right sort of stable market for European investors seeking diversification. Australian borrowers are responding by getting on the euro issuance bandwagon. Albert Smith reports.

Euromoney's cover story in April "Sinking the unsinkable" raised the issue of apparent unwillingness among European governments, official bodies and even private-sector financial institutions to address the possibility of a break-up of European monetary union in the first years following the introduction of the euro in 1999. Consultants at Mitchell Madison, a firm set up in 1992 by five ex-McKinsey professionals and now employing more than 600 people worldwide, have been investigating the same question. In July, the firm released the findings of a survey of UK-based financial institutions including asset managers responsible for £1.1 trillion ($1.8 trillion), or 40% of the UK's assets under management.

Currency unions have come and gone but this is by far the biggest and boldest experiment of them all. The euro will wrench market share from the dollar as an international and reserve currency. It will trigger a gigantic rebalancing of investmetn portfolios. It will stimulate growth in equity markets and labour mobility. Yet it also threatens to tyrannize the economic management of individual states and pitch Europe towards the imperative of a single economic policy. In the following series of articles, writers and economists describe euroland, what forces will drive it, and what impact it will have on banking, finance and international markets.

The world's biggest company, General Electric, has passed another milestone. On July 15 its market capitalization exceeded that of the entire Hong Kong stockmarket by $10 billion. At the close of business it was worth $306 billion. GE is covered by 42 analysts, Hong Kong by 498 analysts. So does that make Hong Kong overbroked or GE overvalued? SI