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Governments in emerging markets have spent $250 billion bailing out banks in the past decade. How can the industrial countries help stop the haemorrhage and any knock-on into their own markets? By imposing worldwide rules for better supervision, building markets and institutions in their own image, or by letting free markets do their work? James Smalhout reports.

Saudi Arabia's capital markets will require reform and liberalization if the kingdom is to build a dynamic economy on what is left of its oil wealth. The Saudi authorities are as aware of this as outside observers and their own bankers, but have been ultra-cautious about implementing change. Philip Moore reports on signs of a quickening pace.

Borrowers: Borrowers start to play a strategic game

First there were commemorative watches, then there were commemorative bottles of beer - called Red Dawn. Now the Bank of England has joined the crush to make a buck out of Hong Kong's handover to China by printing special £5 notes.

By all accounts the City of Moscow is in good shape.

The new UK Labour government has won fans in the City of London by announcing, after only a few weeks in office, a wholesale reform of financial regulation.

The scandal at Nomura Securities, the subject of this month's cover story, carries an important lesson for anyone dealing with Japan. Japanese financial institutions have a very different attitude to the law than do their western counterparts. Not to put a finer point on it, they have little moral compunction about breaking the law when it suits them.

Business leaders keep a close eye on rivals in Russia. "If your competitor buys a Mercedes, you'll buy a Mercedes," says Yuri Kotler, spokesman for the Federal Commission for the Securities Market. "If he hires a western chief financial officer, so will you. And if he issues a Eurobond..." Since the Russian Federation's debut $1 billion Eurobond last November, many companies have said they'll follow suit. So far none has. The state Eurobond "had the gestation period of an elephant", as one banker put it (it took nearly a year to launch the deal) so there should be little expectation that Russian companies would be right behind it. And the City of Moscow only managed to launch its $500 million debut Eurobond at the end of May. St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod are due to come to market by the end of this month.

Contrary to the pessimists' view, Europe will show economic recovery this year and next. And that will ensure monetary union stays on track for 1999. In core Europe, super-cheap money has been complemented by weak exchange rates. And those easy monetary conditions are likely to win out over Europe's Maastricht fiscal masochism to produce economic recovery.

Thailand in mid-1997 has an economic fight for survival on its hands. Can things get worse? Gill Baker examines the market

The use of credit derivatives is set to expand dramatically. Christopher Stoakes explains some of the legal pitfalls.