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Finance Minister and Central Banker of the Year: The regional winners

Want to buy a biggish local bank at a knock-down price? Join the queue of foreigners bidding for former state-owned banks in central Europe - but watch out for messy loan books and murky questions of ownership. Antony Currie reports on the restructuring of the region's banking systems and profiles three of the newly foreign-owned banks.

Deals of the Year

We've called them the big-game hunters - the men who track down the juiciest debt deals and clinch them. How do they do it in the burgeoning Asian market? Sure, they need to know what their banks can deliver and what their clients need. And they must be able to convince borrowers that transactions will fly in the market. Beyond that there's a whole slew of intangibles that can be summed up as establishing relationships. Having friends in high places helps, but you may have to do more than play golf with them - chess, pinball and even the odd bout of karaoke can be required. It also pays to be able to talk about anything, from Japanese ethnohistory to Korean youth soccer. Steven Irvine spoke to some of Asia's finest exponents of talking on their feet.

At the top end, Russian banking still revolves around lucrative government business and political influence. But with T-bill yields falling below 20% this summer and alleged corruption in the banking system, which acts as a surrogate government treasury, Russian banks face some big challenges. Charles Piggott reports on whether the time has come for Russian banks to get their hands dirty doing what their namesakes elsewhere do - lending money.

Since Anatoly Chubais became finance minister, Russia's stock has risen dramatically. The architect of privatization is now pushing ahead with wide-ranging economic reforms, to the delight of the international community.

Did Bankers Trust buy Alex Brown to make itself more attractive to a potential buyer? And should NationsBank buy First Chicago to give it more bargaining power in any future merger talks, possibly with BankAmerica? As America awaits its biggest-ever banking mergers, such are the advanced strategies under discussion. All will become clear after the final round of mega-mergers, reports Peter Lee.

The biggest contest in the 21st century will be to win in China. Whether it's IPOs, M&A or mutual funds, growth forecasts for China put all other markets in the shade. But the world's biggest potential market is also the toughest to crack. What's the right strategy? Steven Irvine looks at how the major investment banks are positioning themselves.

Some unusual rumblings have been heard from Singapore recently. In July the resignation was announced of Koh Beng Seng, deputy managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and reckoned to be the country's hard man of financial regulation. Then the prime minister persuaded him to withdraw his resignation and asked him to join a committee on banking deregulation. Behind the scenes, a furious debate is raging about the kind of financial centre Singapore should be.

Investment bankers have nothing but plaudits for Gao Jian, the man who is turning China into one of the world's premier borrowers. A smallish, soft-spoken individual, Gao is the director general of the state debt-management department at the ministry of finance. He cuts a distinctive figure, sporting a shock of spiky hair, a worsted silk tie and chunky black, rectangular spectacles.

As it tried to fend off speculative attacks against the baht this summer, the Central Bank of Thailand played every trick it knew, from the conventional to the heavy-handed, to prop up the currency. This included raiding firms suspected of spreading negative rumours and black-listing investment banks that lent to hedge funds. James Sinclair reports.

Richard Wood's agreeable daily commute consists of a stroll across Prague's Charles Bridge while he looks at the castle and swans and thinks about what he has to do that day. "It beats the tube," he says.