No-one believes that investment bank research is fully independent. As competition and costs escalate, the pressure on analysts to hawk deals and withhold negative views is intensifying. While some analysts get rich in the new environment, many have quit, and investors have turned to their own and third-party research. Michelle Celarier reports.

Inside London's St Paul's Tavern, Billy Whitbread sups his first pint. He thinks it highly hopped and attenuated - a process whereby you get as much alcohol out of the sugar solution as possible. "It's Gales or Pedigree," he concludes, verging finally on the former, because Pedigree "has more of an effect on my head".

GE Capital Services earns 37% of General Electric's profits, so it's anything but strategically insignificant. Right now its generals are engaged in a big push in Europe - it's taken over 34 businesses in two years. The strategy is to revive run-down assets by reshaping them with the company's "non-bank bank" formula. But purchases of traditional banks in eastern Europe are unnerving analysts. Can GECS be as successful with these as with British and French acquisitions? Brian Caplen reports.

Indonesia's banking sector is currently in a state of flux. Deregulated in 1988, it expanded beyond expectation, but is now set to consolidate. Tighter regulation, tough economic measures, bad loans and lower bank lending are forcing private banks, in particular, to be more entrepreneurial. By James Sinclair.

Chairman John Reed's successor could be any one of half a dozen managers running the new streamlined Citicorp - Reed is giving nothing away about his favoured choice. But this group is fast changing the culture of the "largest small bank in the world" as it retools its approach to branded products and global coverage. Peter Lee reports.

The banking sector has been at the leading edge of economic reforms throughout the economies of central Europe. For most of the more developed markets, striving to join the European Union has given them a focus to get their banking sectors in order, and fast. The majority of countries in the region have created sound legislative frameworks based on international banking principles and double-tier banking systems around the core of a broadly independent central bank. However, the hard work is by no means over. The difficult task has been to make sure that the banks that have been created are able to survive and operate according to commercial principles and, ultimately, to stand on their own feet.

Charlotte-based Nationsbank is now hot on the heels of Chase/Chemical and those global investment banks in Europe. But is the full-service ideal right for a house that grew by opportunistic acquisition, mostly of distressed or damaged goods? Philip Eade reports.