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After helping to put NatWest Markets on the map in his native Australia, Peter Hall was planning in 1994 on retiring from the investment banking business. Then 45 years old, he intended to devote his time to other interests, including Buddhism, which he defines as the "science of mind and consciousness". Although unable to take the week-long silent retreats that the study of Buddhism requires, he believes understanding its tenets have helped him a great deal. Far from the ego-driven mentality that seems to drive most investment bankers, Buddhism calls for a type of detachment. "It's about having a calm and receptive state of mind," explains Hall, who says he meditates for an hour a day.

Who is going to end up in control of Russia's leading industrial companies when the period of restructuring that has followed privatization finally draws to a close? More evidence emerged in December that it's likely to be the 46 financial-industrial groups (Figs) that have sprung up over the past three years. Last month two of them, Most Bank and Alfa Bank, came forward as the leading contenders for a large stake in a new holding company that will control the telephone sector. The Figs already link together over 60 banks and 20 other major financial institutions as well as 650 industrial giants including Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest nickel producer, and oil company Yukos.

Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and Baron David de Rothschild spoke to Brian Caplen about the style of the Rothschild businesses and the firm's restructuring plans.

Poll of Polls: The rise of DMG

Still big, but more sensitive

By March 1998 Europe's biggest futures exchanges will launch the first contracts to be settled in euros. Only the fittest will survive. London, Paris and Frankfurt are locked in combat to win the greatest prizes of all ­ those dominant futures contracts in short-term and medium-term interest rates. David Shirreff reports

Can Rothschild reinvent itself?t

Two groups of financial institutions are reviving the idea of trading derivatives linked to UK real-estate prices, five years after the first attempt to do this ended in disaster.

The Russians are here - at last

In which Ingersoll and Komarovsky are sent on a course to learn that "ethics" is not just a county to the east of London.

Boca Juniors, Argentina's most famous football club, is to break with its working-class traditions by becoming the first team to list on the local stock market. The club, supported by an estimated half of Argentina's fanatical football fans, last month won authorization from the Buenos Aires stock exchange to launch the Boca Juniors Closed Common Fund, with the aim of raising $20 million to buy a much-needed batch of new players.

The near-collapse of Agrobanka, the Czech Republic's fifth-ranked bank, has highlighted the aggressive activities of investment companies such as Pavel Tykac's Motoinvest. Philip Eade reports on the elements of the crisis and the chances that lessons have been learnt from it