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The culture that powers HongkongBank

Investment banks see Asia as the next big market, so the largest ones have all established derivatives operations in the main centres. That means fierce competition ­ but it's a fight for relatively thin demand. Regulators in some countries restrict use and local exchanges are undeveloped. But growth has come in surrogate markets and such instruments as covered warrants in Hong Kong. Antony Currie reports.

The governments of Asia have never trusted financial markets. They view stock exchanges as little better than Chinese gambling dens, and find it hard to comprehend that bond, foreign exchange and money markets are any less dominated by wild speculation. As a result, the regulatory and tax environment for financial markets in Asia is still rooted in the 1960s. Banking systems are rigged in a such a way that banks are forced to provide cheap finance for industry, and allowed little room to develop. The biggest Asian economies have progressed remarkably in technical and managerial competence in the past 20 years, but their financial industries remain appallingly backward.

At the Kazan Universal Exchange in the Tatarstan capital, 1,500 km east of Moscow, traders can find virtually anything for sale from flowers to furniture to plumbing supplies. But upstairs at the exchange itself, the one item they will be hard-pressed to find are corporate stocks.

Brokers' analysts in Asia have been arrested for taking their duties too seriously. But that's a minor reason for the poor quality of the region's research. Corporate disclosure is limited and accounting standards are poor. And analysts are young, inexperienced, harassed by overmighty corporate finance departments and intent on careers outside research. By Michael Steinberger.

The culture that powers HongkongBank

International investors hoping for rapid changes to China's financial system will be disappointed. The quick fix is not Beijing's style. Nevertheless, the slow-but-sure approach is producing encouraging results, as Sophie Roell reports.

The big screen portrayal of Grand Cayman as a den for criminals, has among other things prompted an international conference to plug the British dependent's impeccable credentials.

Five Go To Swapland won't be the title of Carolyn Jackson's forthcoming novel, but according to her latest forecast it will be about "a bunch of guys having fun during the formative years of the swap market".

Big Blue is a big bull on China. Former Citibank man, Kent Price, now general manager for banking at IBM in Asia Pacific, has written a report forecasting an ATM revolution, with IBM at the forefront.

While Deutsche Bank officials worry about alleged "superwoman" Nicola Horlick's next move, a senior Deutsche man in Hong Kong is more worried about a genuine superwoman: his own wife.

Any American above a certain age working in finance remembers The Bankers, Martin Mayer's 1975 bestseller. But since then Mayer has become something of a cause célèbre of all things bank-related. Then he became chairman of a New York school board.