Olds joined DBS as CEO in mid-1998, the First foreigner to run a Singapore bank. He has since been overseeing a complete overhaul of the bank’s business lines, transforming the institution from the last vestiges of its role as a traditional development bank lending at low margins, to one hoping to dominate at the retail and wholesale level, both in Singapore and Asia-wide.

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

Thai Petrochemical Industry is Thailand’s biggest restructuring headache. And if it is going to pull itself out of trouble, its managers claim that it needs access to large amounts of working capital. But that is not forthcoming.

Japan's government debt is frighteningly large – larger by far than any other country's has ever been. Some Japanese economists contend that because the overwhelming bulk of it is held domestically there is no fundamental problem. Yet others, and most outside observers, reckon indebtedness cannot be overcome by growth or fiscal means and is a threat to worldwide stability.

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.

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.

Issuer: Hutchison Whampoa Ltd Amount: $2.5 billion Type of issue: exchangeable bond Date of issue: January 8, 2000 Bookrunners: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch

Hong Kong companies have been rated top in no fewer than seven sectors in Euromoney’s annual survey of the best-managed companies in Asia. Chinese and Malaysian firms are highly rated in energy and entertainment. IT and technology companies headed several country polls last year and the Nasdaq effect and a slack period in the semiconductor market have not prevented analysts from continuing to rate them highly this year.