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The quest to find the best-guarded bank in Central America begins in Costa Rica. Raids on branches have become a problem in this traditionally peaceful, unarmed society. Crédito Agrícola de Cartago has taken on a nervous-looking youth with a rifle. Few such worries at the central bank, where the security guard is armed only with a pistol and is too busy chatting with the shoe-shiners to notice me sneaking past.

In his state-of-the-nation address last month the president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, was full of free-market fire. He berated the assembled lawmakers for the slow pace of economic reforms in what is the most populous of the five Central Asian states and called on them to to push forward with political and economic reforms. He then went on to make what were some of the most radical statements of his career, promising to finally allow convertibility of the soum, the national currency, by 2000. Among the foreign investor community in Tashkent the speech was met by a round of yawns. They had heard it all before. The investment climate in Uzbekistan has been getting slowly worse over the past three years with the government, all the time, tightening control of the few foreign companies still sticking it out in Tashkent. The Russian crisis has hit the Uzbek economy hard. Russia used to account for nearly half of all this cash-strapped country's exports.

During the past few months we have been swamped with gadgets incorporating the euro symbol. All the major European banks have been distributing euro-inspired watches, clocks, calculators and even food items to their main clients and their employees to celebrate the birth of the new currency.

Like most emerging markets Argentina is unused to hostile takeover bids and certainly not those on the scale of Repsol's bid for YPF. To some analysts the takeover is a case of a company with a poor investment record in Latin America -- Spain's oil company Repsol - gaining control of a well-managed firm - YPF has been remodeled since privatization with a clear strategy and strong balance sheet. They warn of the dangers of leveraged takeovers.

Zambia's economy remains as dependent as ever on copper, and there is no immediate prospect that the current depressed price of this commodity will improve. Zambia also desperately needs currency stability. The kwacha has fallen by more than 70% against the dollar in the past two years and interest rates are over 30%. Helen Henton reports

Iceland's financial markets will barely be recognizable by the end of the year, such is the pace of change. Having opened its markets to foreign investment, the country is now pressing ahead with privatization. Rebecca Bream reports

At the unlikely venue of Durbanville racecourse in autumnal South Africa, a little-known four-year-old pipped Like A Rock by a length to win the Maiden Plate over 1,200 metres on April 28.

Reflexologists, iridologists and physiotherapists are not the analysts usually associated with Warburg Dillon Read, but a platoon of them was hired in to "destress" the bank's London workforce. Over the three-day event, all but 40 of the bank's staff turned up to get their cholesterol and blood pressure tested, and to take in advice on alternative therapies.

Everyone's memory is different, some have no memory at all. But a handful of deals appear to stand out as those that broke new ground and had even competitors tipping their caps in admiration. No fewer than three people, at exactly the same time, apparently saw ducks floating in the bath and leapt out shouting "Eureka" - the birth of the floating rate note. Few firsts have such a canard attached, but they are all now part of Euromarket mythology. By Rebecca Bream.

With the evolution of risk management, we're learning more about aggregation, liquidity risk, and pairing assets with liabilities. Result: banks will de-lever; mutual funds will take on more credit and insurance risk, writes Robert Gumerlock