As Seoul Bank faces being dragged into the government's financial holding company, CEO Kang Chungwon explains how he plans to get the bank back on track.

Japan's ruling political party has been hit by a triple whammy of financial scandals just when the economy needs strong leaders.

John Chalsty might at first seem a strange choice to be creditex's new adviser to its board. The veteran banker spent most of his career at DLJ, starting in investment research before becoming head of investment banking and then CEO.

In spite of the battle in Seattle and the subsequent inertia that has gripped the World Trade Organization, Supachai says he is looking forward to taking over from Michael Moore as WTO director-general. “I want to be totally immersed in this work,” he says.

Head of media and telecommunications, Société Générale

The slogan for this year in Seoul is Visit Korea 2001. The government hopes to drag in about six million tourists and earn several million dollars of foreign currency. Clearly it's hoping to attract visitors from further afield than North Korea. Indeed the government has another agenda, beyond managing the current account and strengthening reserves. Its programme also marks a crude attempt to prepare the population for the mass invasion that will soon follow. The football World Cup hits town next year.

Russia never seems to play by the same rules as the rest of us. Its macroeconomic indicators for 2000 were the country's best in 30 years. The economy grew by somewhere between 7% and 8%; tax reforms - part of a wide-ranging economic reform plan - helped the government record a fiscal surplus of 3% of GDP, after many years of high deficits; the strong oil price helped Russia to rebuild its foreign currency reserves to $28 billion. Leading Russian companies took steps to improve their dismal record of abusing minority shareholder rights, under pressure from a government that understands the urgent need to attract foreign investment. The government itself concluded a renegotiation of commercial debts with the London club of private sector creditors in August 2000.

In a wide-ranging interview, Supachai Panitchpakdi, Thailand's deputy prime minister and director-general-elect of the WTO, talks about the successes and failures of government strategy in bringing Thailand out of the 1997-98 Asian crisis and assesses the prospects for a successful continuation of the work of the WTO

Vietnam’s newly created stock market boasts only five stocks, yet one foreign investor reckons its dematerialized system is far superior to London’s. Strong economic growth rates are attracting direct and portfolio investors. Enthusiasts reckon valuations are at their lowest and likely to rise before long.

Three years after the Asian financial crisis confidence has still not returned to the area. Many investors are sceptical that these countries have done enough to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Singapore’s deputy prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, outlines the changes that have been taking place in his country and his vision for the future.

Korean deputy finance minister Lee Kyun Kyong speaks about the barrage of criticism that has hit the government.

With a first round of bank restructuring that killed off more than half the country’s banks behind it, Korea is now facing up to consolidating what is left, ostensibly to enhance competitiveness and create economies of scale. It’s not clear, though, that the timing is right or that the government’s approach to mergers is appropriate or sufficiently disinterested.

Calls from securities traders and investors for a more closely integrated system of clearing and settlement in the international securities market are growing louder and more impatient by the day. There were some signs of progress last year in Europe when Euroclear and Sicovam announced their definitive merger agreement and London Clearing House (LCH) and Clearnet said they planned to consolidate their activities. Yet progress in European consolidation has been slow. And even if it gathers momentum, questions remain on how to connect clearing and settlement systems globally.

Babur Ozden discusses prospects for the Turkish Internet sector.

Asia’s clean-up of its banking mess is losing momentum. There is recognition of what needs to be done but getting there is proving difficult. The crisis atmosphere has abated and economic recovery will pull the banks along with it. But failure to deal with bad debts will hold countries back.

Turks are responding enthusiastically to the high-pressure promotion of internet access. So far, though, there’s not much money to be made from the business. Access providers will soon have to reconsider their cultural aversion to business consolidation, or else think smaller.

The senior government official shook his head vigorously in affirmation. "Yes, Japan's budget deficit will grow. Yes, there will be a government bond crisis." Then he said: "The best scenario for Japan would be an earthquake that struck the downtown headquarters of the ruling Liberal Democrats when all its senior politicians were there. Then we might get some of the reform Japan needs."

Having pursued a dirigiste approach to local non-financial companies in the 1990s, encouraging expansion abroad and regional leadership, the Singapore government has now turned its attention to the banks, urging liberalization, consolidation and outward-looking expansionism. It can't force the banks to do what it wants. But it gets very cross when they don't.

The restructuring of the Paris legal scene took an unexpected turn late last year, when one of the city’s leading French M&A partners finally gave up on his old firm and did what his colleagues had spent the last two years avoiding – he joined an Anglo-Saxon firm.

Application service provision has transformed prospects for suppliers of risk-management software. Systems that smaller corporations would once have found too costly, or too feature-heavy, have become available relatively cheaply and in digestible chunks from ASPs on the internet. Even larger companies can see the advantages of the ASP strategy and it is possible that the model will supersede the installed software approach. Boris Antl and Richard Laden check out what is available and forecast market developments

On a late-January afternoon, a group of settlements clerks, Brady bond traders, inter-dealer brokers, and other footsoldiers of the emerging-markets universe straggled into a small conference room on the 28th floor of JP Morgan Chase in Manhattan.

The First step in building a strong bank is to have a strong, defined franchise. And each of Singapore’s banks can claim some success in one or two areas. But none has a really strong franchise worthy of a domestic, let alone regional, leader. And this is largely the result of complacent neglect of customer needs.

he two administrations that succeeded that of Ferdinand Marcos put the Philippines on the road to economic recovery and did their best to wipe out cronyism and corruption. The recently ousted Estrada regime went a long way to reversing their achievements. Maggie Ford reports on the chances of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo restoring reform and removing some of the deep-seated inequalities among Filipinos

Malaysia has emerged from the Asian crisis to find itself occupying a lower place in the regional pecking order. From being one of the must-have equity markets for foreign investors, it has become an also-ran. Domestic equity demand is also depressed and it’s likely that in the near future bond markets will offer more interest.

Japan's Ministry of Finance building has the feel of a British public school, and its occupants consider themselves the real rulers of Japan.

Thus far, two mergers in Singapore’s financial sector have failed to go through, and several cross-border ventures have gone awry. Find out why.

Japan’s ministry of finance has lost face in the past decade as an arbiter of business development. The complexities of market growth have overwhelmed it, the collapse of a Liberal Democratic monopoly has removed its political underpinnings and scandalous revelations have been made about its corrupt practices. Now it has lost its traditional name. Despite the rise of rivals such as the Financial Services Agency and attempts by politicians to bypass MoF’s budget functions it’s far from clear who is in charge.

The abrupt resignation of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's president, John Mack, is the most serious yet in a series of setbacks over the past six months for a firm once seemingly immune to crises.

At worst, running a restructuring operation in Thailand can be a life-threatening métier, but its practitioners face a host of other obstacles, not least getting paid. Paradoxically, Thais are also seen as being too gentle and non-confrontational to buckle down seriously to the business of extracting debt from each other. On the buying side of the business, major players such as Lehman Brothers claim to be making a fair return on the distressed debt they have acquired.

"The boys have made a mess of it," mused Brian Winterflood, chairman of Winterflood Securities, on hearing the news of the appointment of Clara Furse as the first woman chief executive in the 228-year history of the London Stock Exchange, "so why not let the girls have a go?"