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In a year in which deals of all shapes and sizes were pulled, plaudits go to all equity and bond issuers who were able to complete their deals at all. Some stars of the past - Asian project deals, Latin American corporate bonds and eastern European privatizations - barely made it to the finishing line. But one muscle-clad team of super-athletes swept the board in 1998. This was the year of the telecoms industry: from the stodgiest emerging-market monopoly to the most glamourous builder of fibre-optic networks, telecoms operators were everybody's favourite performers.

Issuer: Grovebase Properties

His punishing schedule was that of a corporate financier rather than a central banker. In five years as head of the Bundesbank's international relations, Helmut Schieber took an average 10 foreign trips a month to attend summits with bankers, finance ministers and regulators. "Yes, it was depressing," says Schieber of the ceaseless round of aircraft seats, chauffeured cars and windowless conference rooms.

Issuer: Deutsche Bank

Whenever JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs in London manage to poach staff from each other, it usually leads to a bout of cheering and high-fives in the relevant office. No doubt much of the rivalry comes from the close proximity of their headquarters, which are less than five minutes' walk from each other near Blackfriars Bridge.

The logic of plugging together two industries - insurance and capital markets - is irrefutable and inevitable. But pricing insurance risk and selling it to investors is a painful process, frustrated by a glut of insurers selling their cover too cheaply. The visionaries are positioning themselves for a change in circumstances that could be swift and merciless, like the perils they're trying to insure. By David Shirreff.

Partly by luck, but as much because it was well structured, well organized and guaranteed to run to deadline, Brazil's auction of the state's controlling stake in telecoms provider Telebrás was a roaring success. Michael Peterson reports on why it came out as Euromoney's privatization of the year. Also, Brian Caplen looks at other notable Latin American deals and deal-makers of the year.

In Turkey business patriarchs never die, they simply fade away. In the wings their sons - rarely their daughters - prepare to take over, whether they're entrepreneurially inclined or not. But family-owned business heads are increasingly realizing that survival will depend on more formal structures. A few are even putting them in place. Metin Munir reports.

Minos Zombanakis is a pivotal figure in the history of the Euromarket. Known in the 1970s simply as "the Greek banker" (he was reckoned to be the only one of any note on the international scene), he was a combination of financial visionary, smooth salesman and masterful self-promoter. As one rather hostile magazine article remarked about his assault on the syndicated loans market: "It was one part nerve, one part histrionics and several parts pure fluff, but it did the job."

It's a firm that revels in its sense of history and values its independence. What it does, it does well - clearing, mortgage bonds, niche investment banking and just a little bit of prop trading. Nick Kochan goes inside Bear Stearns and gets a verbal memo from its combative chairman "Ace" Greenberg.

Telecommunications: Ways to survive a sea of troubles

Poll of Polls: Warburg's excellently average performance