Euromoney, is part of the Delinian Group, Delinian Limited, 4 Bouverie Street, London, EC4Y 8AX, Registered in England & Wales, Company number 00954730
Copyright © Delinian Limited and its affiliated companies 2024
Accessibility | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Statement

December 1999

all page content

all page content

Main body page content

LATEST ARTICLES

  • Greece has come a long way in a short time. The economy looks good and business is booming. But is there a danger of declaring victory while the battle is still raging? Greeks are starting to argue that Greece is different and that excessive stock market valuations are justified. Many other countries have done the same in the past and lived to regret it. Brian Caplen reports.
  • Author: Pauline Loong
  • Euromoney's latest brokers' poll of Asia's Best Companies took place against the backdrop of cyclical economic recovery accompanied by partial reform. India's best have come top in a number of sectors for the first time, while Korean and Hong Kong corporates also do well. After robust growth this year IT and other technology companies continue to top several country polls. Research by Andrew Newby and Alexa Marx.
  • People: Clare Marshall, former treasurer, Export Development Corporation
  • John Grisham got it wrong of course. Grand Cayman is not a place where private aircraft land at night and men in dark glasses deliver bulging suitcases of banknotes to dummy banks sporting no more than brass nameplates.
  • Bad vibes in Bishopsgate
  • Bad vibes in Bishopsgate
  • People: Mark Collier, Chairman and CEO, Investia
  • Bad vibes in Bishopsgate
  • The US could be in for more than a few surprises this holiday season as it unwraps the Financial Modernization Act of 1999 - its latest gift from Congress. It's a big bill with lots of attachments. Principally, it allows banks to conduct securities and insurance business under the umbrella of new financial holding companies and boosts the power of the Federal Reserve as regulator of these. Another outcome may be to extend federal safety net protection to lending for pork-barrel projects. James Smalhout reports.
  • Author: David Shirreff
  • Author: Peter Lee
  • Climbing Steadily From Behind
  • Author: Rebecca Bream
  • Asia 100 table
  • Two crucial meetings this month may settle the uncertain future of Bavarian giant HypoVereinsbank, in turmoil since chairman Albrecht Schmidt and merger partner Eberhard Martini had a very public row. Auditors, former board members and the Munich state prosecutor are embroiled in a high-octane war. It was born in the euphoria of German unification, brewed in the property slump of the late 1990s, and exploded into a battle of numbers that no-one can win. David Shirreff reports.
  • Author: David Roche
  • Take your pick: Latin America is a basket case doomed to a constant cycle of spurts of short-lived growth followed by economic collapse; Latin America is a continent transformed, with a healthy respect for economic freedom, a burgeoning middle class and an economy on course for convergence with the developed world. Michael Peterson reports.
  • A year on from the Basque separatists' ceasefire and the region is booming, led by Bizkaia, largest of the three Basque provinces. Its capital city, Bilbao, is upgrading its infrastructure to cope with the huge numbers of visitors to the new Guggenheim Museum. It's attracting international banks and technology companies, partly thanks to favourable tax rates. But Madrid is contesting these. Meanwhile ETA extremists remain a threat. Jules Stewart reports.
  • Rumours about an impending sale of Warburg Dillon Read have been circulating for over a year, ever since more derivatives losses were announced following the merger with UBS. This year they have resurfaced, despite a healthy performance so far (WDR accounted for 30% of UBS's pre-tax profits for the first nine months of the year, bringing in $1.34 billion). Chase Manhattan, which lacks an equity operation, and Salomon Smith Barney, which lacks a significant European equities operation, have both been touted as buyers.
  • Author: Nigel Dudley
  • Author: Dominic Jones
  • After the summer craze for investing in all things electronic and e-commerce-related, things have calmed down on the surface in the US. Now the challenge is to make the investments work. The major stock and derivatives exchanges know they have to respond more forcibly to the myriad threats to their franchises. At the same time the start-ups and the investment banks which are equity partners must transform their ideas into reality while trying to avoid the organizational nightmares which have plagued the exchanges. The next few months are more likely to be ones full of frustration for both groups, reports Antony Currie.
  • Europe's largest telecoms operators have a new ambition. Having lost monopolies at home, they now want to build networks that stretch across Europe all the way to Vladivostok. Charles Piggott reports on the telecoms battle for central and eastern Europe.
  • The conditions are right to transform this year's steady stream of European bank capital issues into a torrent. That is good news for firms who see these finely crafted products as one of the last areas of value in an increasingly low-margin bond business. Michael Peterson reports.
  • Author: Antony Currie
  • Excessive reliance on short-term foreign currency debt lay behind the Asian financial crisis. Asia needs local sources of long-term funding to prevent a recurrence, especially with the banking systems still so unhealthy. Bond markets in a range of local currencies are springing up, with active encouragement from financial authorities. Peter Lee reports.
  • Euromoney editor Peter Lee talked to Donald Tsang, finance secretary of Hong Kong, during his hectic visit to the UK in November. Though he is finance secretary of what is only a special autonomous region of China, Tsang cuts the figure of a fully fledged finance minister on the international stage. He shot to worldwide prominence last year when, in an extraordinary step for an official from a freewheeling free-market centre, he intervened massively in the local stock market, buying up HK$118.1 billion ($15 billion) of shares in response to an attack by international hedge funds that was set to spread from the stock market to a devaluation of the Hong Kong dollar.
  • Most Asian economies have in recent months recovered strongly from the 1997 crisis. But there's a distinct lack of irrational exuberance among both borrowers and lenders. The irresponsible big spenders have been cleared away and the best credits don't necessarily want to borrow at all. Banks aren't exactly falling over themselves to lend to responsible corporates that survived the crisis because of their prudence and integrity. But their merits are increasingly being recognized. Peter Lee reports.