Where’s the silver lining?

To some extent, the collapse of US energy company Enron at the end of last year set the tone for the financial markets in 2002. Bankers have had to negotiate the fallout from corporate America’s largest default, and in particular the highly publicised accounting malpractices exposed at Enron and a handful of other firms in the US and Europe.

These revelations have severely rattled investor confidence. Derivatives structures such as share option schemes have come under the microscope in the US