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After years of struggling in the shadow of the New York Stock Exchange, has the Amex finally found a formula for survival'?

THE ARAB ONE HUNDRED

Miguel Joscts Ribeiro Cadilhe, Finance Minister of Portugal, did not consult the foreign bankers last July, before he told them that their minimum capital requirement was raised from $10 to $17 million each - irrespective of assets - and he has refused to see any of them since. Euromoney's correspondent was the first foreigner allowed to ask him, face to face, why he did it.

Be kind to your compliance having a hard time of it. He is the fellow that banks have been hiring to make sure that their new activities - market-making and broking in gilts and equities, added as part of Big Bang. comply with the regulatory framework being put in place under the Financial Services Bill (FSB).

The level of known defrauding by the international financial community is rising fast and set to take a further leap in London on the back of Big Bang.

It was the largest international stock offering ever launched, and the biggest flop in the Euro-equity market to date. The attempt to sell $2.1 billion of Fiat shares in late September - $1.6 billion internationally and $500 million in Italy -left the underwriters with heavy losses and caused acute embarassment for the lead manager, Deutsche Bank Capital Markets. But it also provided some valuable lessons, and most observers agree that thc debacle will not undermine the continued growth of the international equity market.

No one likes to talk about it, but handling discreet money generated by criminal operations has been a growth area for banks. Now there is a threat to their business. New legislation, better co-operation among enforcement agencies and a flurry of mutual assistance treaties have at least a fighting chance of denting the money-laundering game.

No area of the banking system is immune from fraudsters - not even the security team designed to prevent them.

The global equities market is here to stay, by almost all accounts. But its future depends to a large extent on the development of new and better procedures for settling transaction. Trading itself is only half the story. Making sure that execution, payment and delivery take place smoothly and promptly is the main challenge, given the widely differing systems that currently exist around the world and the long delays for which some markets are notorious. As Jonathan Paine, director of Enskilda Securities, told a recent Euromoney conference: "The most serious difficulty in any market is undoubtedly settlement delays, as any of you who have tried to buy Spanish or Italian shares will readily appreciate. No institutional investor will buy a publicly quoted share if the simple market mechanisms necessary to trade that share do riot exist." But if investors can be assured that they can place an order for any international stock, have it executed without problems and receive the shares in exchange for payment without delay and at low cost, maily in the industry believe that international equities trading will rapidly expand. Indeed, lower

Since the partial deregulation of the German capital markets six months ago, investment bankers from the US, Japan and the UK have been busy trying to sell their products in Germany.

While newer short-term paper markets around the world are flowing freely, the Canadian commercial paper market is silting up. Of 175 formal commercial paper programmes, only 105 are still active. In midyear, according to McLeod Young Weir, the Toronto brokers, domestic corporate issuers had 17.1% less commercial paper outstanding than the year before.

With the possible exception of France, no major industrialised country has been slower than Japan in privatising its industries.