Financial Markets and Institutional Investors in Central Asia

The international financial markets have recently swayed widely due to a variety of unexpected problems such as the September 11, 2001 terrorism, a series of corporate scandals represented by Enron and WorldCom and, most recently, the Argentine collapse. Accordingly, the local bond markets in emerging economies in East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe have been exposed to sharply increased emerging market spreads, which amounted to more or less 1000 basis points in late 2001 and in the second half of 2002, now declining to 500 to 600 basis points.