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Emerging market banks: Turbulent times

In an interview with Euromoney, Bundesbank vice-president Johann Wilhelm Gaddum outlined the Bundesbank's thoughts on maintaining influence after Emu and touches on the gold revaluation issue. Here are some of his main points:

Flexibility of staff, good systems and local knowledge will decide which banks will emerge as winners from Emu. John Leonard's tips include Deutsche Bank, ABN-Amro, Den Danske Bank, Barclays, Santander and Allied Irish.

If the terms for accessing Target - the proposed interbank payments system - are unfavourable, banks from countries outside Emu might decide to forget about the official euro markets and create a Euro-euro market.

The trend in Europe is for banking supervision to be split off from central banks. So, after Emu, who should have ultimate responsibility for the safety of the banking system: national central banks, the European Central Bank, or some new regulatory agency?

Asian brokers: The old hands fight back

Emu will have an enormous impact on European fund managers. That in turn will force global custodians to rethink their strategies. By Sue Kingman.

Mexico's recent elections proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the country is headed toward democracy - an outcome welcomed by investors even though the new political environment raises doubts about the direction of economic policy.

It's always helpful to find a scapegoat when things go wrong. Scapegoat hunters in Thailand think they have found one - or rather two. A pair of ceremonial wooden elephants were installed outside the ministry of finance, only a few weeks before the country was rocked by the resignation of two finance ministers and the collapse of the baht. Coincidence? Not according to those who remember that they used to be there, until they were removed in 1990 because of their allegedly inauspicious influence. Can we expect more violence to the baht until whoever put them there has the good sense to remove them? RM

Why tinker with international currency speculation by throwing sand in its wheels, when you can block its path completely with a big boulder? That's the view of Paul Davidson, professor of political economy at the University of Tennessee. A 1% round-trip Tobin tax (after Nobel laureate James Tobin) discourages only the small-time short-term speculators. It needs a radical overhaul of the relationship between currencies and economies to end damaging medium-term attacks, Davidson says.

The recent news that Cherokee, an entertainment company, was listing on Ofex - which stands for off-exchange - was greeted in the City of London with smirks and raised eyebrows.

Following recent devaluations in the Philippines peso, Thai baht, Czech koruna and, latest, the Indonesian rupiah, international bond investors are asking themselves, where next? A report by Deutsche Morgan Grenfell points to the mounting pressure on such currencies as the Malaysian ringgit, Brazilian real and Greek drachma.