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Hoping to increase the transparency and execution quality of a marketplace long shrouded in controversy and scandal, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) implemented several new rules in the over-the-counter equity market known as Nasdaq. Although the changes have been in the works for several years, last year's Justice Department price-fixing case against 24 major Nasdaq market makers pushed the SEC to act this January. Apparently unrepentant about the disrepute surrounding their market, leading firms are already grumbling about the new rules.

For many cynics in the securities industry, the upcoming introduction of the euro had only one real benefit. The enormous cost of converting systems to the new single European currency could be used as timely camouflage to correct the firm's information technology cock-ups of the past.

You won't see these options being traded on the floor at Liffe, but Shahram Nikpour at Bossard Consultants thinks that options on information technology firms are already hot property.

In his 18 months running the World Bank, James Wolfensohn has earned a reputation as something of a straight talker. Feeling the heat is Chilean electric utility Endesa. Wolfensohn has accused it of failing to fulfil environmental obligations that were part of an IFC loan for a hydroelectric plant on the Bio Bio river, 400 kilometres south of Santiago.

The European Monetary Institute has finally confirmed the worst fears of supporters of European monetary union. At the start of a meeting with clients, Paul Mercier, head of financial markets at the EMI, said to them: "I want to be as open as I possibly can there will be a delay in monetary union."

Something very strange is happening with the world economy.

Continental Europe makes way for Scandinavia and North America in Euromoney's biannual survey of country creditworthiness. Pressure to conform to Maastricht criteria on Emu has dampened growth, tightened budget deficits and weakened consumer demand. High unemployment and currency weaknesses have pushed countries such as Switzerland, France and Italy down the ranking. Rebecca Dobson reports.

Death of a bank

It's not often that a league table for a major capital markets sector features firms like Wako Securities, Kokusai Securities and Caja de Madrid above Goldman Sachs. But the MTNWare bookrunner league table for the first two months of 1997 does. It's the league table, generated by Euromoney and Capital Data, that the whole market is arguing over: the table of MTN trades.

Wall Street's best-kept secret

Has spy novelist Len Deighton heard of the merger that the rest of us have missed? In his latest book, Charity, the main character, Bernard Samson, meets "a mergers and acquisitions man from Deutsche Morgan Stanley" in Berlin.

Fannie Mae's £1 billion five-year issue ­ the first Eurosterling global ­ caused "the curtain to rise on the global sterling stage", says Abigail Hofman, managing director of debt capital markets and global head of origination at BZW.