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Is the Asian currency crisis over?

The first time I come to Hong Kong I check myself into the Mandarin and go out to meet this promising young shipowner called CH Tung, I sell him on a new way of financing his fleet, and this is the original Junk Bond.

Nordic borrowers are inconsistent users of capital markets and when they do use them tend to concentrate on price above all else. With the advent of Emu likely to shift investors' attentions towards credit quality and away from currency arbitrage, this short-term approach to the market could hurt Nordic government and corporate issuers. Jules Stewart reports.

Canada's six largest banks dominate their home market, so it's hardly surprising they are looking abroad for growth opportunities. But their expansion strategies could hardly be more different: while Nova Scotia is buying up Latin American banks, CIBC is becoming a player on Wall Street and Toronto Dominion is cultivating a niche as a discount broker. But what would really allow Canadian banks to become serious global players would be if the government were to allow them to merge. Richard Blackwell reports.

In both roles, Shashenkov will be exploiting his talents as a western-educated Russian who can talk to foreign and Russian bankers and investors on their own terms. Such Russians are in big demand by the country's banks.

While other high-tech private trading firms such as O'Connor Associates and Chicago Research & Trading have sold out to large banks, Shaw has chosen a strategic alliance (in March) with Bank of America, with the aim of selling his firm's product capability - initially in equity derivatives - to Bank of America's 20,000 corporate customers.

When one of Scandinavia's major international companies wants to launch a bond or share issue it turns to a global player like Morgan Stanley - not to a local bank. Most Nordic banks concentrate on smaller companies and retail banking. But their ambitions are growing, and with privatization gathering pace and a single European capital market looming, the region's banking sector is consolidating rapidly. Robert Minto reports on the race to become Scandinavia's first truly regional bank.

MeesPierson never sat happily within ABN Amro, and nobody was surprised when the venerable Dutch merchant bank was put up for sale last year. Now new owner Fortis faces the challenge of accommodating the bank - and motivating its restless managers before the current trickle of departures turns into a flood. Antony Currie reports.

Issuer: SBC Glacier Finance Series 1997-2

It seems to be Ugur Bayar's fate to be a civil servant. It's the third time in five years that the 33-year-old bachelor has quit his job in the private sector and moved back to his mother's house in Ankara to start working for the government. This is a rare phenomenon. There are droves of ex-bureaucrats in Istanbul who have left the privations of the civil service for fat salaries in the private sector; the reverse rarely happens. Ankara, a dull, characterless city whose only industry is politics, is easy to leave but notoriously difficult to return to.

The Kalff interview

Remember Allerdale, Waltham Forest, Hammersmith and Fulham? The failure of international banks almost a decade ago to force these UK local authorities to pay out on their swaps contracts and loan guarantees has held back the development of municipal finance in the UK. While municipal bond markets have grown up in many other European countries and even emerging markets, banks' sour memories have hampered the UK private finance initiative (PFI), designed to encourage private financing of large infrastructure projects, including new road building, since its official launch several years ago.