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Alan "Ace" Greenberg will have worked at Bear Stearns for 50 years next month. Over that time he has become a legend of Wall Street. He joined the firm when it had 125 employees, most of whom, he says, were relatives of the partners. He became the chairman and chief executive officer of Bear Stearns in 1978, and still holds the position of chairman.

Deals of the Year

Deals of the Year

Deals of the Year

Deals of the Year

Deals of the Year

It is ironic that the strongest disciples of free markets are often the messiahs of currency pegs, fixed exchange rates and currency target zones. Those who believe the market should set the price for everything reject its decision on pricing international economic input and output.

Brazilian telenovelas - the South American equivalent of soap opera - are not noted for their strong take on reality. Fantasy is more their stock in trade.

The euro is a month old and already the new currency is bringing about changes more rapidly and more disconcertingly than expected. It is already clear that the removal of domestic currencies - and so the unique advantages enjoyed by local banks in their home markets - will wreak havoc with middle-tier institutions. In the payments business for example, it has only just dawned on the smaller German banks that their only asset was the Deutschmark. Without that domestic market, they will be unable to compete with the clearing giants. In the Eurobond markets, the euro will be the catalyst for more institutionalization of previously retail assets. This means the notion of local distribution will become meaningless. Local branches may sell a bank's new asset management service, but the bond-buying will be managed centrally. The winners will be the large underwriters with the best trading and research product. The losers will be banks whose operations were based on knowing pockets of local currency, largely retail investors. That is, most of them.

The Russian Federation has defaulted on up to $90 billion-worth of restructured Soviet-era debt, the GKO reschedulings are stalled and Western banks have laid off almost all their Russian workers. February has rarely been kind to Russians, and Muscovites, not the world's most upbeat urban dwellers at the best of times, believe that this one will be the worst for decades. Even so, there are glimmers of hope.

To the Big Bang Control Centre in Docklands where Reuters is preparing to convert its 520,000 terminals worldwide to the euro in one fell swoop at 1800GMT on Sunday January 3.

Last June, India's new finance minister, Yashwant Sinha, promised to speed up privatization and said a majority stake in ailing domestic carrier Indian Airlines would be sold. No finance ministers had yet dared to make a public commitment to privatization; they had all used the more politically correct word - disinvestment. By December, paralysed by a fractious coalition government and his party's drubbing in the regional elections, Sinha had managed to sell only a small stake in a rail-freight company for $53 million. In January, as he prepared this month's budget, he had few options left to plug the large deficit.