Saudi Arabia’s banks are bracing for a period of intense retail competition by preparing to launch new products, especially for Islamic and internet banking, and developing personal and mortgage lending.

General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's head of state, talks about his country's economic programme, the Afghan Taliban and Islamic fundamentalism.

A law that was passed virtually unnoticed will come into effect this month and has prompted many strategic and financial investors to question whether any investment in Korea’s financial sector is wise.

Global capital markets rarely look gloomy at both ends of the fund-raising spectrum, as the past year's momentous events indicate. The primary debt business is robust and active whereas equities are still shaking off the hangover that followed the indulgences of the tech stock party. Jonathan Brown sketches in the background to this year's Euromoney capital-raising poll which the universal banks dominate

Euromoney's September edition had already gone to press when news broke of the horriffc terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The sheer scale of the destruction and loss of life numbs the mind, making rational analysis almost impossible. Financial markets consist of nothing more than men and women buying and selling. In the immediate aftermath few could turn their minds to anything so mundane as dealing or stock tipping. It's likely that every reader of Euromoney will have known people who worked in the World Trade Centre and it is with those unfortunate individuals that most people's thoughts now lie.

ING’s unique approach to the provision of financial services has placed it among the pioneers.

Investors fearful that the crisis in Argentina might spill over into the largest Latin American economy, Brazil, generally draw some comfort from the fact that the country’s central bank is led by former speculator Arminio Fraga. Fraga, who took up his post just after the floating of the real in 1999, has implemented an inflation-targeting system, enhanced bank supervision, and garnered universal respect and admiration. Brazil might have been hit by Argentina, but now the country should be seen as a turnaround story, he tells Felix Salmon

Turkish inspectors have discovered that the governmental abuse of the state banks continues and has remained unpunished.

Russian bonds are looking much safer than equities, offering good growth potential while still guaranteeing favourable yields. Once again, investors have their eyes on bonds.

Société Générale paid Eu1.2 billion for 60% of Komercni Banka as it moved into the Czech Republic in June. The move was criticized as too risky. Now, it appears that it was right on target.

The IMF has begun to stress prevention of crises rather than their cure and the new US administration agrees. But that raises numerous imponderables. Should the stress of prevention be on incentives to countries to behave responsibly or on building sound international financial architecture? And if the goal is to seek out better ways of forecasting impending crisis, does the IMF have the legitimacy to release market-moving information of this sort?

The Russian population is increasingly confident about the future. The country is enjoying trade and budget surpluses. Economists, though, fret about the implications of high inflation, while growth depends heavily on continued high oil prices and a sound debt repayment strategy.

Hong Kong is facing a crisis - how to fund an increasing budget deficit at a time of almost unprecedented economic downturn.

Ben Aris spoke to Yuri Ponomarev, the chairman of Vneshtorgbank (VTB), the international trade bank of the Russian Federation, which is now Russia’s largest bank ranked by shareholders’ equity.

On August 13, the two-year versus 30-year US treasury yield curve gapped out to a seven-year high of 184 basis points. The two-year treasury was trading at its lowest ever yield in the 25 years since the two-year security was first introduced, and three-month Libor was even lower at 3.57%. Moreover, with the US economy showing no signs of recovery, short-end rates seem set to move even tighter. The extraordinary steepness of the US yield curve has provided mouthwatering swap opportunities for corporates that would not normally consider conversion of fixed-rate liabilities to floating rate. The greater than normal swap business has also put added downward pressure on swap spreads.

The swing of the political pendulum in the US has had an equal and opposite reaction in Europe. In the 1990s, under the post-cold war order of transatlantic relations, Bill Clinton's centre-left US administration promoted its own brand of caring capitalism. Inflation was banished, the world economy grew strongly and financial markets soared.

Billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra kept his job as Thailand's prime minister, but only by the skin of his teeth and as a result of a split court judgement last month. An immediate political and constitutional crisis was thereby avoided - but only at the risk of buffeting the country's fragile political system and storing up trouble for later.

Washington's battles with big budget deficits may seem like a distant memory, but a familiar refrain from those days has taken on new meaning for the IMF. "Less is more" has been a powerful, if unstated, theme running through many Fund-led packages, ever since the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-95.

Many bankers Euromoney has spoken to are fearful that anti-capitalist and anti-globalization protesters will severely disrupt this year's IMF/World Bank meetings - and some even refuse to discuss the issue on the record because they don't want to give the protesters the oxygen of publicity.

President Putin’s has pushed through a swathe of reforming laws, spearheading his drive to liberalization. But implementation will not be easy. Nor can it be assumed that the liberals will stay in the ascendancy. Business oligarchs and the conservatives are asserting themselves as Putin struggles to pick a way through conflicting interests.

There are few bigger jobs in finance than US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs. So meet John Taylor, the former academic economist who finance ministers and central bank governors from around the world will be courting for the next few years. Taking time out from the negotiations over Argentina he delivers some tough messages on official sector financing packages: they should come with fewer conditions, but those conditions should be strictly monitored and enforced, before funds are disbursed. He offers to share useful experience with Japan, expresses confidence in the European single currency project and explains to James H Smalhout why the US current account deficit is sustainable

The tango effect is being felt in the international bond and currency markets and in the halls of the central bank in Brasilia, but so far it has had relatively little effect on the average Brazilian.

The only good thing about the roads in Manila is the jeepneys. The long, brightly decorated Filipino buses-cum-taxis bring a dash of colour to the tedious traffic jams on dilapidated, pock-marked roads.

Mexico has prospered through ever-closer links to the US, which has been the main market for its booming exports. Seven years on from its own crisis, Mexico now appears strong enough to shrug off any contagion from Argentina. The downside, though, is that Mexico will now suffer if the US economy goes into a deep and prolonged downturn. Faults in its economy may yet be revealed.

The number and variety of regional and municipal issuers tapping the international markets continues to grow steadily. Central governments across the Americas, Americasand emerging markets want to devolve financial responsibility. The degree of sovereign support varies.

The Fed has dscovered the gift of the gab, and it doesn't seem to have done any harm. Not yet, anyway.

Bulgaria’s new government is preparing to enter the Eurobond markets to reduce its debt service costs. The country’s strong recovery from the banking collapse and economic setbacks of 1996 and 1997, its recent currency stability and commitment to EU convergence should win it a strong reception among investors. But concerns persist over the credibility of the government’s ambitions to balance the budget, cut taxes and increase spending all at the same time.

Years from now, the banking crisis of today will probably be seen as the beginning of a period when market dominance started to pass to foreign hands.

Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz is single-handedly staging an economic revolution in Pakistan, selling yet another military government to a sceptical international investor community.

Argentina is looking at the worst case of deflation that the world has seen since the US great depression in the 1930s, and it is hard to see where the necessary boosts in confidence and growth are going to come from to break this confidence crisis.

The largest banks in Latin America are in its largest economies, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Consolidation has created large conglomerates through in-market mergers and acquisition of local franchises by international powerhouses. By Celina Vansetti, data from Moody’s Investors Service

Under James Wolfensohn the World Bank has beaten off influential enemies through polished public relations, but there are still widespread doubts about the effectiveness of Bank policies. Projects continue to fail and adjustment lending has in many cases been granted without proper safeguards. Bank insiders claim that programmes are increasingly effective but critics point to the weakness of Bank models for measuring success.

Most of the prize assets have been snapped up as bank privatization draws to an end in Europe’s emerging markets. Those banks that remain on offer are getting more pricey. But impending European Union accession for several countries means this is still an appealing market and is driving strategic change among both veteran players and big-spending newcomers.

The reform of Russia’s electricity sector is going faster than that of other utilities. UES chief executive Anatoly Chubais talked to Ben Aris about the proposals and the timetable

David Malpass, chief international economist at Bear Stearns, in a speech last month to the National Economists Club in Washington outlines the view that the world economy is entering a long, "saucer-shaped" slowdown. The nub of the problem is deflation, reckons Malpass. The flip side of the greenback's repeated 10% year-on-year gains is a drop in commodity prices of roughly the same amount. That's going to result in hard knocks for many economies.

RZB, Austria’s largest private banking group, has been in the race for market share in central and eastern Europe from the beginning. Now, with so many western rivals, RZB looks to new ground in a pair of Bosnian start-ups.

Russia’s stock market has ended the first half of the year as the third best performing market in the world.

Strong-arm tactics haven’t entirely disappeared from Russia’s industrial consolidation process but the most successful companies are increasingly ploughing ahead by using gentler methods.

Pakistan has gone a long way towards stabilizing the economy under its present government, greatly improving the balance-of-payments situation and increasing revenues from taxation: all policies that make multilateral aid a much more practicable proposition. From this base, the government hopes to put in place strategies that will encourage growth, with rationalization of the banking sector and privatization high on the agenda.

World Bank president James Wolfensohn responds to the many criticisms being thrown at the institution, points to some of its recent achievements and outlines a vision of how it might work in future.

A small group of western-minded business leaders have banded together to lobby for a Russia free from robber barons and fit for their children by the year 2015.

The UAE’s capital markets have been neglected by the federation’s own high-net-worth individuals while foreign investors have been excluded from many sectors. However, the rich are likely to invest more at home in the wake of market volatility elsewhere and foreigners may also be attracted by such deals as Emirates Airlines’ bond. But much remains to be done to develop local markets.

KBC demonstrates just what happens when deep pockets are used to address pressing commercial imperatives.

Ben Aris spoke to Arkard Volsky, chairman of the Russian Union for Industrialists & Entrepreneurs about the influential pressure group of top businessmen.

In an economic downturn, law firms specializing in financial business can ease the pain by establishing relations with their clients that are not strictly based on individual deals. The clients may also benefit.

It is over a year since president Vladimir Putin moved to bring unruly Russian regional governors to heel, but it is still unclear whether the system of federal districts he introduced will help or hinder foreign investors intrepid enough to venture into Russia.

When international rating agencies announced a negative outlook on India's sovereign rating in early August, the equity and bond markets barely reacted.

Russia’s vast utilities are gravely afflicted. In desperate need of investment to rebuild worn-out plant and distribution networks, they are also drained of income because of uneconomic pricing and persistent corruption. Ben Aris reports on the progress of restructuring

Equity buyers are increasingly basing investment decisions on companies’ records on corporate governance as well as on projected real shareholder returns. The challenge for investors is to measure and reward good corporate governance practice as readily as they have criticized bad corporate governance in the past. Euromoney offers its own contribution, with a new corporate governance ranking and also reproduces analyses by banks. For investors and companies, especially in emerging markets, new rules of engagement are being drawn up. Kapila Monet reports, research by Andrew Newby

Saudi Arabia has demonstrated strong growth in the midst of the falling global economy, and that growth can be attributed to more than just oil. Natural gas and tourism also have contributed to this boom, but it is unclear whether Saudi Arabia can generate enough jobs for its growing population.

Even after China has joined the World Trade Organization, there will be a grace period of five years before foreign banks can compete head-on with local banks. But that still represents an ambitious timetable for reform. There has been progress, but the sheer scale of China’s banking system, the need to adopt new accounting standards and the number of bad loans present hurdles.

Lars Thunell, president of SEB, in which Investor has a large stake, explains its strategy

This summer the euro began to strengthen, the European Central Bank pleased markets and politicians with a long-awaited quarter-point rate cut and criticism of the policy conduct of the ECB receded. It may be time for a new assessment of how the bank has been doing. Clearly it has inherited flaws from the political compromises made to set it up. Is it in such a hopeless state that mistakes will happen again, or were past errors excusable gaffes in an otherwise reasonably successful performance?

The Paris Club of official bilateral creditors is promoting the view that holders of sovereign bonds should take their share of the burdens when borrowers need rescuing from default. Jerome Booth argues that this burden-sharing dogma flies in the face of insights that can be gleaned from history and conflates what is essentially politically-motivated lending with market-driven lending. It will, he argues, inevitably damage the debtors it is ostensibly designed to help

Underperformance is still the norm in emerging markets.

The aura of calm efficiency surrounding the new Indonesian administration of president Megawati Soekarnoputri has come as a relief to most Indonesians. After nearly four years of riots, coup rumours, unpredictable policymaking and political infighting, a rest is as good as a holiday.

Russia has done little to reform a banking sector that is still littered with hundreds of thinly capitalized and barely functioning institutions. But there are some signs of improvement. A stronger economy has made it more attractive for the larger commercial banks to start lending to Russian companies. It’s a new game for them.

"CSFB is just like Laurel and Hardy," says one banker. "It's gotten itself into another fine mess." Following hard on the heels of its problems in Japan, Sweden, the UK, India and the US, it's now in trouble with the Chinese. This time it's nothing to do with the regulators, but a diplomatic faux pas, and an expensive one at that.

Banks in the UAE have been tardy about consolidation and rationalization, relying on the benefits of continuing high oil prices. Now, though, they face the challenges of money-laundering investigators and impending WTO financial sector liberalization.

Despite the dire state of the Japanese economy, yen-denominated issues have maintained their popularity, providing borrowers useful diversity and a domestic investor base hungry for yield.