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Peregrine's last days, by Andre Lee

He has been brought back to save Malaysia, just as he did in the mid-1980s when he dragged the country out of recession. Can he do it again? Tun Daim Zainuddin spoke to Steven Irvine about transparency, empty monorails and the problems with Malaysia's financial system.

Issuers: Pub chains

Simon Brady becomes editor of Euromoney from next month. He succeeds Garry Evans who has worked for the journal for the last 12 years, eight of them as editor, and who has moved to Tokyo to fulfil an early ambition to work in Japan. Evans became a great editor of Euromoney, swinging its editorial into the different mainstreams of international finance with growing dexterity and judgement, setting a pace that impressed professionals in markets across the world. He will be missed.

Bargain hunters spread to Europe

The European Central Bank's governing council might not be meeting yet, but Deutsche Bank - who else? - has the inside track. For about six months its leading economists in 10 locations have been acting out a "shadow" ECB council which, in a monthly conference call, sets a shadow interest-rate policy for the euro.

European corporates may enthusiastically be embracing the idea of shareholder value, but does this create value for bond investors? This was a question that investors were keen to ask Diageo - the new company created in last year's £9.75 billion ($16.25 billion) merger of Guinness and GrandMet - during its roadshows for a debut $500 million Eurobond. As the trend for European corporate M&A continues, debt investors will increasingly find that recognized names are absorbed into new companies with unfamiliar credit stories. That puts an emphasis on both borrowers and lead managers to explain developments to investors. The trend of hiring highly creative and expensive consultants to come up with new and apparently meaningless company names, scarcely helps.

This is the risk they won't talk about in Brussels, Bonn or Paris - that monetary union, once entered into, goes horribly wrong, scuppering the SS Euro. Prudent financial management demands that the risk of failure, exit by one country or dissolution should be considered. Research suggests it isn't negligible and that its consequences for financial contracts and exposures will be devastating. David Shirreff reports.

Last month, Kendrick Wilson, a vice-chairman of Lazard Freres in New York and one of the firm's most senior bankers, left to join Goldman Sachs. Goldman now boasts the strongest line-up of all financial-institutions groups in the US. Wilson, and Goldman's head of FIG, Christopher Flowers, are the two biggest names in the M&A advisory business. Wilson worked on several of last year's tie-ups between commercial and investment banks and was also involved behind the scenes in one of the biggest deals that got away, representing American Express in talks with Citicorp

Business travel poll 1998: A hard landing in Asia

Ghana has built a framework to enable economic takeoff. But sufficient investment is still lacking and development has now been further hampered by an energy shortage. By Christina Katsouris and Philip Eade

Romania was slow to restructure its communist-era economy. And now reforms are stalled again. But foreign institutions are confident of the country's long-term potential and the competition for the first privatization mandates has been fought hard. Meanwhile, some banks are concentrating on building a presence in the retail market