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Investors in euro corporate debt have had a rollercoaster ride. They've gone from europhoria to nursing burnt fingers, and to drawing the lessons for 2000. As if buying endless new credits wasn't complex enough, they are simultaneously having to understand and predict the course of Europe's M&A boom. How do you cope in a market that's fast-growing, unbalanced and full of nasty surprises? Marcus Walker profiles four of the top asset managers to find out

It's clear why Vodafone conquered Mannesmann. Vodafone won because it paid to win, using its powerful stock. Its shareholders supported its share price and thereby its bid because they believed its story: that big is best in the globalizing telecoms game. And they feared failure might burst the telecoms bubble. What's less understood is how Mannesmann lost. It gave away the early momentum through bungling, suffered splits in its defence advisory team, and came within an inch of winning the hand of a French rescuer, only to hesitate. Klaus Esser made Mannesmann a top company, but his risk-taking triggered this contest and shaped its outcome. We also reveal the battle that raged beneath the surface between Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley during the biggest hostile takeover of all time. Marcus Walker reports

It may have more illustrious neighbours, but giant, oil-rich Kazakhstan is largely self-sufficient in food, has a functioning domestic capital market and modern pension system and is run on democratic lines. It also has access to the international capital markets and has just repaid a maturing Eurobond. Ted Kim reports

Edited: Antony Currie

It's been a tough year for many borrowers in the international capital markets. Corporate issuers in particular have fallen quickly from grace, having been the market's darlings a year ago. Now fixed income investors across the world are increasingly risk-averse. Certain sectors of the primary markets, US high yield for example, are very difficult to access. In response to these troubles, many of those borrowers that bankers and investors have nominated to be awarded for their efforts in the past 12 months have reverted to a strategy first made popular by Fannie Mae two years ago. They are striving to produce large, liquid benchmark issues that will at least give investors the comfort that they can easily trade in and out.