Stephen Timewell reports from Reykjavik on Iceland’s rapid transformation into a pan-European banking force. Iceland is a truly amazing country. And it is not just the volcanoes, the geo-thermal springs or even singer Bjork that make it unique.
Iceland boasts a banking sector that almost doubled in asset size last year, an economy that grew at 5.2% in 2004 and an expected 6.6% this year and a GDP per capita amongst the highest in the world at $40,250 in 2004.

Alliance & Leicester is run by a chief executive with retailing in his blood. But he is repositioning it as a niche commercial player, as Michael Imeson reports.
A leopard cannot change its spots but a bank can change its make-up. Alliance & Leicester (A&L), Britain’s seventh largest bank and a former building society, is primarily a retail bank but is gradually developing its wholesale banking business.

Many believe that property-linked instruments are poised to become the next big thing in the derivatives market – but they are not sure when. In the first of two articles, The Banker looks at how the market is likely to evolve.Natasha de Teran reports.
Concerns about overheating in the UK property market have been as widespread over the past few years as they ever have been, with many fearing the worst from the record rise in asset prices.

Bankers are already on the case of how China’s and the Gulf States’ huge reserves of foreign exchange can be put to best use.Stephen Timewell reports.

Ending global poverty is each nation’s responsibility – but the global policies also have to be right, says President Ricardo Lagos of Chile.

Consolidation in the Bosnian banking sector has accelerated further.

Research shows that foreign banks operating in Japan have found the going increasingly tough during the past 12 months while the US prepaid card market goes from strength to strength. Stephen Timewell explains.

Israel’s biggest financial institution, Bank Hapoalim, announced on September 13 that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to acquire a 50% share in Turkey’s C Kredi ve Kalkinma Bankasi (C Bank) for $113m, with the aim of breaking into the lucrative Turkish mortgage and project finance markets.

There are major issues to iron out for EU emerging markets in adopting Basel II, warns the EBRD’s Piroska M. Nagy.