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Romania has quietly slid into a debt trap and there are fears that it could be allowed to go under as the IMF and World Bank play hardball.

How well we remember those early days when we helped you to meet the Herculean characters of the discount market in El Vino's and how much we admired the speed with which you took into account the day's liquidity shortage in your consumption of gin and tonics before lunch.

Ecuador's bankers are scratching their heads wondering how to design products to accommodate a radical new 1% tax on capital transactions, which from January will replace traditional income tax. The tax will be withheld from bank customers whenever a deposit is made into an account or for a fixed-term investment, or when a cheque is cashed. Customers will not be charged, however, when money is withdrawn from an ATM. It is feared that the tax will lead to further distortions - the financial system already has a huge quantity of transactions that don't always provide added value but which are operationally necessary - and to tax avoidance by conducting transactions outside the system, says analysts.

As events of the past year have shown, transparent and timely information is crucial in the financial markets. Lack of information can be a killer, or at the least a severe embarrassment. But ironically those very institutions that have been pushing most for greater transparency in emerging markets, the major US banks, are themselves guilty of hiding their own exposures from their shareholders.

The question of how the world's institutional investors will react to Emu and the changes in the European market over the next year is a much debated topic.

Blue chips of the future

Not long ago Deutsche Bank was reckoned among the dullest, slowest moving and most parochial of European universal banks. Trammelled by its corporate shareholdings, anxious about the conflicts between the equity business and traditional banking services and baffled by new risk management tools, Deutsche looked an also-ran. US institutions were invading its backyard. The large UK players were building high-profile investment banking arms and even the French and Dutch were moving faster.

Blue chips of the future

Euromoney's third Asian company ranking is based on a survey of market analysts at major banks and research institutes worldwide. We received 37 replies. Respondents were asked to nominate the top three companies in each of the countries or sectors they covered, bearing in mind market strength, profitability, growth potential and quality of management and earnings. The company's current share price was not taken into account. Points were awarded on a scale of 4:3:2.

Japan 50: Japan's unsteady giants