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Will Asia's economic crisis knock eastern Europe off course? Will political disagreement stall privatization? Will the region's small companies flock to join the stock market? Rebecca Bream gauges the flow of new east European equity in 1998 and looks ahead to the year's biggest deals.

Last National Bank of Boot Hill,

If you're impressed with the inexplicably long hours your colleagues have been putting in over the past couple of months, ask them what they've been up to. They may be part of the growing number whiling away the small hours playing computer games such as Doom, a virtual-reality shoot-'em-up game of extreme violence.

With trillions of dollars of securities lent or temporarily sold each day the risks, once thought minimal, began to look higher in November. There's a rethink on counterparty risk and the practice of making a spread on lower-grade collateral, but the credit-spread business is growing. Michelle Celarier reports.

Interest rates and bond yields are up, the rouble is under pressure and money is flowing out of the country. But Russia could survive the crisis in better shape than other emerging markets. And, as Ronan Lyons reports, if it brings banking consolidation, greater fiscal maturity and a new breed of long-term foreign investors, so much the better

You read it here first. In May 1996 Euromoney quoted a normally well-informed source in Switzerland as follows: "Who do you think has been buying UBS shares for the past few weeks?" Swiss Bank Corporation, he says. "They're already merging, they're doing a dance together." Apparently they had been doing this dance since 1995.

Issuer: PT Makindo

And then there were three

Days before South African president Nelson Mandela lambasted "apartheid patterns of ownership" in a five hour speech to December's ANC congress, the final nails went into the coffin of South Africa's showpiece black empowerment deal.

Investment bankers' pay has been pushed through the roof as European firms seek to compete with Wall Street. But now banks are squeezing costs as they see their growth prospects fade. For all but the very best employees, the days of sky-high salaries may soon be over. So don't spend that seven-figure bonus all at once - it may be the last for some time. By Suzanne Miller.

Few bankers would include the fact that they were once a scout on their CV, "as a joke". But Peter Luthy is not, perhaps, an ordinary banker. A fit-looking and apparently easy-going 46, he gives off a convincing sense of having squeezed the most out of life. He spent two years in his early 20s working as an idealistic carpenter in New Jersey and another two in his late 30s as a wealthy non-worker, travelling the world with his milliner wife Candace and skiing wherever the opportunity arose - 100 days a year.

A native of Calicut, India, Arjun Mathrani was one of a cadre of foreign-born bankers groomed for leadership at what was historically the most international of US financial institutions: Chase Manhattan Bank. But now Mathrani has become one of the last of such senior executives to leave at a time when the bank seems less internationally focussed.