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Investors who bought shares in Ionica at £3.90 ($6.40) during the innovative UK telephone company's public flotation led by SBC Warburg Dillon Read in June, have soon regretted that decision. Just four months later in November, Ionica issued a warning of a slowdown in sales. It announced a first-half loss of £77.2 million. Worryingly, problems of insufficient base station capacity, a delay in implementing a crucial software programme as well as the company's own imposition of new credit controls on customers, had together slowed its drive to sign up new paying subscribers. The news sent the share price tumbling to £1.56.

Only the best will survive

When the world started to melt

Only the best will survive

Euromoney's tables were compiled using data from Capital Data Bondware and Capital Data Loanware for the period January 1 to October 31 1997. The regions covered in the rankings were north Asia, south-east Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Australasia. However, Australian and New Zealand dollar transactions were excluded from the table of Asian currency bonds. Both public and private issues, where available, were included in the tables and were correct at the time of going to press.

Only the best will survive

Only the best will survive

Outside Japan, Asian investors have become a rare breed in recent months. But they still exist, and the one thing they prize above all else is liquidity. Antony Currie reports on attempts to cultivate a group of investors whose importance can only increase.

Asia may be crumbing, and rumours of losses on several investment banks' proprietary trading desks are beginning to do the rounds, but that doesn't appear to be hampering the desire to splash out on lavish Christmas parties.

Which are Asia's most sophisticated borrowers? This is the question Euromoney put to 16 heads of debt syndication in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. As spreads widen and credit ratings fall, these are lean times for Asian borrowers. Only the best - those who have spent the past few years developing an innovative approach and building up a good name - will be able to get their bonds away. By Nicholas Bradbury.

It is one of the boldest economic plans of the century: China wants to sell or merge its state-owned enterprises - nearly half the country's economy. Jack Lowenstein reports on the difficulties ahead.