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Poll of Polls: The rise of DMG

Japan's public-sector institutions have the luxury of borrowing with a guarantee from their government. But they waste the opportunity, paying as much as 10 basis points more than they should for funds. The reason: lack of professionalism and bureaucratic meddling. Garry Evans reports.

The Spanish government is expected to open at least two new markets this year to provide the fixed-income sector with greater depth and liquidity. Jules Stewart reports on the interest generated as the treasury casts off its cumbersome traditional approach to borrowing.

The jumbo Pfandbrief was designed to attract international investors to what had been largely a domestic German debt instrument. Until recently, though, it was being marketed as if Germans were the target. Non-Germans want clearer pricing information, conventional credit ratings and more warning of upcoming issues. Some issuers are responding, not least because the Pfandbrief looks like being Germany's main contender in European debt markets when a single currency is instituted. Antony Currie reports.

As the world enters the fifth year of economic growth, regulators, shareholders and creditors of international banks must be starting to wonder what horrors are building up on the banks' balance sheets. Disturbingly, the problem loans if they exist will probably be hidden from public scrutiny in the form of bilateral lines. No doubt they are being justified to the banks' internal credit committees by that well-worn excuse that they are essential to maintain relationships with clients that offer other, more profitable business.

In their desire to get a head start over each other in India, Wall Street investment banks have forged joint ventures with local partners. Three US banks JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs have adopted this strategy. Surprisingly, all three have agreed to remain minority shareholders in the ventures even though the law permits them a majority holding. Pressures may be building, though, for the US banks to buy out their local partners.

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

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.

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.

A Hong Kong for eastern Europe?