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In the week that South Korea sought IMF assistance and Yamaichi announced bankruptcy, it was easy to miss the tiny column inches devoted to Jardine Fleming's flagging results. The latest figures show a continued decline in the Hong Kong-based investment bank's profitability. In the first half of 1997 it made a net profit of $29 million, meaning its contribution to parent Robert Fleming's profits had reached an all-time low of 16% of the Scottish bank's earnings. This is down from 28.8% last year, and well short of the target 25% to 33% Fleming wants.

Issuer: Eesti Uhispank (Union Bank of Estonia)

Peregrine's still flying

The pack of acquisitive admirers circling around Patria Finance, Prague's much respected investment-banking firm, is growing bigger. Komercni Banka, the Czech Republic's biggest bank, made the first approach. Then came international investment banks, with Fleming and Merrill Lynch reputedly among them.

A crinkle in the English law of security has been more or less ironed out - but don't ask for an opinion on it yet. By Christopher Stoakes.

Simon Meadows is known for striking terror into CSFB traders at the bank's Canary Wharf headquarters in London. But this particular Friday morning he is relaxed, smiling and talkative. Perhaps it's because he is about to go scuba diving in Grenada. Or perhaps it's because he can look back on a good year, having added Russia, Lebanon, Turkey, Slovenia, Croatia and Romania to his list of sovereign clients.

When the Asian crisis struck this summer one investment bank was destined to appear more exposed than others - Peregrine. The Hong Kong-based firm employs 1,700 people in 15 Asian countries. After Asia's currencies began to slip in July so did Peregrine... at least if its rivals' rumours are to be believed. With confidence waning it looked as if the "fast and agile" bird had gone into a terminal tailspin. Then, as ever, its wily boss Philip Tose pulled something out of the bag. Steven Irvine reports on Peregrine's riposte to the gossip, interviews Tose about Zurich's new stake in the firm and looks into the unravelling of the firm's regional operations.

Ranjan Marwah is by no means low profile. One of the first things to catch the eye in his penthouse office is an oil painting of him in an eighteenth century wig, sitting on a horse with his wife beside him. It has the unlikely look of a Mogul emperor painted by Thomas Gainsborough. Marwah is a kind of emperor in his own way. He founded, built and still runs Executive Access, one of Asia's biggest headhunting firms, which derives 72% of its revenues from banking and finance.

Credit derivatives will transform the way banks manage their balance sheets. Once banks adopt a true portfolio approach, they will create a fully liquid secondary market in credit risk. Before then, demand for loans, asset swaps and credit derivatives will surge as proprietary traders and hedge funds cut up the credit curve. Mark Parsley reports.

Forget forced devaluations, plummeting stock markets and widening bond yields, south-east Asia's greatest headache is its weak banking sector. While central bankers looked the other way, the region's banks lent heavily to finance stock-market speculation, overexposed themselves to property and made dubious loans to their own shareholders. As Maggie Ford reports, it is time for the reckoning.

Following currency devaluations and stock-market crashes, Asia now faces its biggest challenge: a full-blown credit crunch. No big bond issues will be done for the rest of the year, spreads on outstanding bonds have gone haywire and trading has ground to a halt. Local sources of credit have also dried up. Corporate borrowers can expect little help from their bankers; devaluation has blasted a hole in many local banks' balance sheets and they have no money to lend even if they wanted to. Peter Lee reports on the likely shape of things to come.

It's a simple idea. You own most of a company so you control its fate. But this notion of shareholder value has been slow to reach continental Europe where governments often allow small groups of long-term shareholders to control public companies. Things are starting to change. Cross-border mergers - even hostile foreign bids - are becoming more common, debt-financed deals are supplanting stock swaps and companies are making big acquisitions using hybrid tradable loans. Michelle Celarier reports on the Americanization of European M&A.