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It finally happened. After lurching from crisis to crisis - muddling through with partial reforms and quick fixes - Russia has finally crashed out of orbit. So who is to blame? Ronan Lyons looks at the key actors in the drama. Who are the seven oligarchs and were they behind the decision to devalue? What was really happening in the governments of Chernomyrdin and Kiriyenko? And what was the role of the IMF and western investors?

Type of deal: attempted purchase

The appointment of David Robins and Malcolm Le May as respectively chief executive and head of global corporate finance at ING Barings reunites the two former UBS management partners whose high profile should go some way to reassuring insiders and clients about their new employer's commitment to investment banking.

Financial crises have a habit of hitting where the world least expects. No-one predicted that disaster would strike Barings in Singapore, the Mexican peso, Daiwa Bank, the copper market, Morgan Grenfell Asset Management ­ to mention only the worst debacles of the past year. So where is next? Euromoney writers identify some possibilities. A crash in credit cards? Gridlock in foreign exchange settlements? A catastrophic loss of confidence in Hong Kong after the handover to China? First, Brian Caplen reports on the results of brainstorming with forecasters and analysts and highlights some dangers ahead

Hank Paulson, appointed co-chairman and co-chief executive (to serve alongside Jon Corzine) of Goldman Sachs in June, is known for being intensely hard-working - although he says he has never prided himself on trying to work more hours a day than anyone else. A committed and active conservationist (along with his wife), he also likes to spend his holidays in the wild outdoors.

Different ways to skin a cat

Scavengers and scratchers of value

Long, long ago, when half the world was ruled by men who still believed in state control of the economy, Poland took the gamble of letting the market decide the price of goods. That dose of shock therapy in 1989 became a model for eastern Europe. The man who imposed it became one of the region's leading economic thinkers. Now he is back at the helm of the Polish economy. James Rutter talks to Leszek Balcerowicz about history, movies and the trials of coalition government.

Foreign banks are trying to sell investment-banking services in Croatia but so far with limited success. Delays in state sell-offs and corporate restructuring aren't helping. By Charles Olivier.

The price of failure is not something that traders like to contemplate, no matter how used to it they have become during the summer financial market crisis. But in the first weeks of 1999, they may be forced to confront failure on an unprecedented scale; the introduction of the euro could make it inevitable.

Scavengers and scratchers of value

Ecuador has two well-organized exchanges, a privatization program, and an open market. So where are the investors? Anywhere but in emerging markets, since Russia's problems. Isabel Vallejo reports