Roland Nash of Renaissance Capital
Wed, 16th Dec -- Mongolia is a country on the point of transformation. As its copper, coal, gold and uranium reserves are brought to market, Mongolia stands a good chance of becoming the fastest-growing economy in the world over the next decade.

Clare Nuttall in Almaty
Tue, 15th Dec -- One of the big questions facing banks in Kazakhstan is how their business will be affected by plans currently being developed to strengthen regulation of the sector. Elena Bakhmutova, chairwoman of Kazakhstan's agency for financial supervision, discusses the plans and their expected impact on the industry.

Samantha Shields in Sukhumi
Mon, 14th Dec -- Georgia's rebel region of Abkhazia elected its de facto President Sergei Bagapsh for a second term December 12 in a vote lauded by Russia, condemned by Georgia and ignored by the rest of the world.

bne
Fri, 11th Dec -- "Azerbaijan will be the success story of the 21st century and the new Singapore." These were the opening remarks in the presentation of AFB Bank at the first ever Azerbaijan investment summit in London in December.

Roderick Kefferpuetz of Centre for European Policy Studies
Mon, 7th Dec -- Gazprom's situation has become increasingly difficult since January's gas crisis. From being ranked as the world's fourth most-valuable corporation in 2008 with a market cap of nearly $300bn, it has now dropped into the low 30s, with its market cap shrinking to around $90bn.

Samantha Shields in Tbilisi
Fri, 4th Dec -- Georgia is hoping its strategic location between Europe and Asia and a raft of government incentives will help it brush off the global financial crisis and attract billions of dollars in investment from Middle Eastern countries over the next five years.

bne
Fri, 27th Nov -- There were a lot of changes on bne's annual bank ranking list for the Eurasia region this year. Many banks moved up the list - though those that improved their position mostly did so simply because they did less badly than their peers.

bne
Fri, 27th Nov -- When HSBC entered Azerbaijan's market at the start of the 1990s, it gave the state-owned incumbents a nasty shock. With only a fraction of the sector's capital, HSBC quickly became home to the largest share of hard currency deposits. To this day, the level of a bank's services are measured against that of HSBC, even though the British bank quit the market over a decade ago.

bne
Fri, 27th Nov -- In September, both Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service warned that Azerbaijan's banking sector remains fragile and highlighted the poor quality of risk management as one of the major issues. Bankers in Baku took exception to the two reports.

Nicholas Watson in Prague
Thu, 26th Nov -- It's said that bad things come in three's, so pessimists at least won't be surprised to hear that after the global financial and economic crises, the next storm on the horizon is the global food crisis.

Ben Aris in Moscow
Fri, 27th Nov -- Uniastrum was one of the fastest growing banks in Russia during the boom years, pioneering a pan-CIS money transfer business worth billions of dollars. But as the crisis began to take hold in 2007, the bank's founder, George Piskov, read the writing on the wall and went shopping for a strategic investor.

Clare Nuttall in Almaty
Fri, 27th Nov -- Kazakhstan's banking sector has been shored up by government cash, but this isn't sustainable in the long run. Until new sources of funding can be tapped, the sector is in for a period of stagnation, a new report from Renaissance Capital says.