An advocate of privatization and foreign investment, Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Assaf is a key figure in economic change in Saudi Arabia.

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MONGOLIA IS A country of extremes. Landlocked between its two former colonial rulers in a landmass some three times the size of France live just 2.6 million people. A dwindling, ageing one-third of the population ekes out an increasingly precarious living as nomadic herdsmen on Mongolia's vast steppe facing up to the world's widest extremes of temperature.

Emerging markets offer US funds significantly safer investment opportunities than some G7 countries, according to new research from risk analysis firm RiskMetrics.

IMF Delegates

The transport system now rivals the weather as a topic of conversation among disgruntled Britons. So there was considerable interest in investor appetite when National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which runs air traffic control services in UK airspace, followed another transport-sector debutant, Network Rail, which maintains the UK rail infrastructure, to the bond markets this summer.

"When we launched our Vice Fund, one SRI [socially responsible investing] group said they would pray for us," says Dan Ahrens, co-manager of Mutuals.com's Vice Fund.

In the wake of September 11, the US authorities targeted informal financial networks serving people in the Islamic world for particularly severe treatment. One of these was called Barakkat, a cash-transmission network that linked expatriate Somalis living in the US with their impoverished home country. Barakkat was closed down less than a month after the outrage, causing enormous stress to the large expatriate Somali community in the US and their families in Somalia.

After a weak 2001, most Arab banks enjoyed little pick-up in their fortunes in 2002. However, early results in 2003 suggest that the tide may be turning.

THE CEO OF a leading investment bank recently offered Euromoney a telling judgement on the state of the sector. "There is now more talent outside the industry than inside it," he noted, reflecting on the exodus from the big banks of some of their brightest and most successful people.

Turkish banks' dependence on earnings from treasury bills has put them in the same ramshackle boat as the government and rendered them apathetic towards innovation and consolidation.

Five years after Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt, burning foreign investors, the government is poised to return to international capital markets next year with $2.76 billion of Eurobond issues. Thanks to the country's revival, investors are salivating at the prospect of fresh Russian paper.

Country risk index: East Asia continues to lead the growth pack, but offers significant risk; Turkey is - once again - at a turning point; and Africa continues to be unsettled, but with less risk of inter-country contagion.

National Bank of Kazakhstan's governor, Grigori Marchenko, won't say it, but he has been the main influence behind his country's widely acclaimed economic success story.

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David Mulford, chairman of CSFB International and long-term friend of the banks, is set to follow such luminaries as JK Galbraith by becoming US ambassador to India. If his past is anything to go by, expect India to do a billion-dollar debt swap within months.

Bankers are grateful for the bouyancy of the debt capital markets. But they are not letting the rush of business impede their efforts to broaden the range of products they offer clients and cut out unfruitful relationship banking.

Ibrahim bin Abdulaziz Al-Assaf, Saudi Arabia's minister of finance and national economy since 1996, has steered the economy through a difficult period. He has played a leading role in the modernization, diversification and liberalization of the Saudi economy and managed its finances prudently in a period in which oil prices have swung between $10 and $30 a barrel. Al-Assaf, a 54-year old economist who has served as the country's executive director at the World Bank for six years and as vice-governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (Sama) and wins Euromoney's finance minister of the year award for 2003, spoke to Nigel Dudley in his office in Riyadh.

Banks reported strong results for the first half of the year, so it seems odd that senior executives at US banks are so concerned about stagnant revenues. It has been an issue for two years, but there were ways of getting around it. First came cost-cutting. Then revenue from the consumer sector held up, with sustained buying and remortgaging of houses, and spending on credit. Third was what banks call yield-curve plays and the rest of us proprietary trading.

There can be a hefty difference between perception and reality on debt markets pay these days. One headhunter recalls: "A senior banker called me when I was on a ski lift at Christmas. He said he was going to get only $1 million in the current bonus cycle. He wanted to know whether he had been hard done by as he thought he was worth $2 million. I got a researcher to check what someone in his position and with his job title would usually earn right now. I called him back and said 'you're worth $600,000, so you're doing well'."

Saudi Arabia is making progress in restructuring its economy, but keeping up to speed a move away from dependence on oil itself rests on high oil prices and low interest rates.

Barbados

With Islamic banking business growing faster than more conventional financial services, competition to provide new products is heating up.

Royal Bank of Scotland is beefing up debt headcount aggressively. In its fixed-income division, RBS Financial Markets, staffing was up 25% last year. This year it aims to accelerate that growth. If it is to fulfil its ambitions to grow from a strong sterling and loan house to a broader business in euros and dollars, it has no choice but to recruit fast.

Advisers: UBS (Cordiant); Goldman Sachs (WPP)

Investors in the US need to decide which numbers to believe. Typically, statistics such as unemployment or capacity utilization are on average revised up or down by 30% within 12 months.

A bull run in the Indian stock market is usually cut short by a scam, and then a collapse. Yet, this time the market regulator seemed determined to check market abuse even as the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex index climbed close to the 4000 mark.

Emerging markets are back. That's the conclusion of the latest quarterly debt survey by Emta, formerly the Emerging Markets Traders Association. In the second quarter of 2003, total emerging-market debt trading passed $1 trillion for the first time in five years.

What are the defining traits that good investment bankers share? Energy, creativity, entrepreneurship, willingness and ability to take risk, the strength of intelligence to form independent views of the world and the courage to back them: all traits that tend to be driven out of people when they become institutionalized within large organizations under cynical leaders. Everyone toiling at the coalface in a large bank should take lessons from the stories that follow of those who have quit to set up on their own. There's never been a better time to do it.

After falling out with the US over access to Iraq, Turkey is regaining favour with the west as its economy revives. Its long-term goal is EU membership, but how far away does that target remain?