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Just as Wall Street bankers go back to work from their summer vacations, the latest financial thriller is hitting the bookstores.

Is the Asian currency crisis over?

When high-flying Hong Kong investment bank Peregrine decided to set up a joint venture in South Korea six years ago, its partner must have seemed an excellent choice. A medium-sized conglomerate, the Dongbang group was a reasonably well focused business, the leading maker of cooking oil, a producer of food materials and owner of a restaurant chain. Inexperienced in investment banking, it was not likely to interfere in the day-to-day running of the business.

Arguments over how to price a deal will never go away, even for frequent borrowers. Most have 15 or more investment banks chasing the mandates, offering the issuer all sorts of advice and inducements. A treasurer who chooses an aggressively priced deal might save his institution a few thousand dollars over 10 years and make himself look good to his bosses, but if it's too aggressive and investors don't buy it, could this harm his future issues? And if the deal is too generous, why should investors bother to buy paper issued later that might be more accurately priced?

In both roles, Shashenkov will be exploiting his talents as a western-educated Russian who can talk to foreign and Russian bankers and investors on their own terms. Such Russians are in big demand by the country's banks.

When one of Scandinavia's major international companies wants to launch a bond or share issue it turns to a global player like Morgan Stanley - not to a local bank. Most Nordic banks concentrate on smaller companies and retail banking. But their ambitions are growing, and with privatization gathering pace and a single European capital market looming, the region's banking sector is consolidating rapidly. Robert Minto reports on the race to become Scandinavia's first truly regional bank.

Nordic borrowers are inconsistent users of capital markets and when they do use them tend to concentrate on price above all else. With the advent of Emu likely to shift investors' attentions towards credit quality and away from currency arbitrage, this short-term approach to the market could hurt Nordic government and corporate issuers. Jules Stewart reports.

It seems to be Ugur Bayar's fate to be a civil servant. It's the third time in five years that the 33-year-old bachelor has quit his job in the private sector and moved back to his mother's house in Ankara to start working for the government. This is a rare phenomenon. There are droves of ex-bureaucrats in Istanbul who have left the privations of the civil service for fat salaries in the private sector; the reverse rarely happens. Ankara, a dull, characterless city whose only industry is politics, is easy to leave but notoriously difficult to return to.

The first time I come to Hong Kong I check myself into the Mandarin and go out to meet this promising young shipowner called CH Tung, I sell him on a new way of financing his fleet, and this is the original Junk Bond.

Take a trip to Moscow and you might come away with the impression that AKA Bank is one of Russia's largest financial institutions. A huge advert for the bank bears down in passport control outside Sheremetyevo airport and also appears on the back of cloakroom tags at the Bolshoi theatre, accompanied by the slogan "the customer is king at our bank" - a concept new to anyone accustomed to the Byzantine ways of Russian banks.

Canada's six largest banks dominate their home market, so it's hardly surprising they are looking abroad for growth opportunities. But their expansion strategies could hardly be more different: while Nova Scotia is buying up Latin American banks, CIBC is becoming a player on Wall Street and Toronto Dominion is cultivating a niche as a discount broker. But what would really allow Canadian banks to become serious global players would be if the government were to allow them to merge. Richard Blackwell reports.

Issuer: ITT Promedia