YEAR IN REVIEW 2000: ECONOMIC-AFFAIRS

Banking Enactment of sweeping financial modernization legislation in the United States, the introduction of a single currency in 11 of the 15 European Union members, and the accelerating pace of industrywide consolidation on a global basis combined to make 1999 a truly historic year for banking and financial services, with far-reaching implications for the new century. On November 12 U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, marking the end of a two-decade struggle to tear down Depression-era barriers between banking, securities, and insurance in the U.S. Although the barriers had already been eroded considerably over the previous 10 years through bank securities affiliates and the creation of Citigroup in 1998, passage of comprehensive financial modernization legislation was widely expected to lead to further consolidation of financial services in the U.S., particularly mergers involving commercial banks and insurance firms. This would be consistent with developments in Europe and likely would further the global trend toward the integration of banking and insurance. Gramm-Leach-Bliley also significantly expanded merchant banking opportunities for U.S. and international banking organizations to invest in nonfinancial companies, although it preserved the long-standing separation under U.S. law between banking and commerce. Enactment of financial modernization legislation had been held up in recent years in large part by serious policy disagreements regarding the allocation of supervisory responsibilities for financial conglomerates comprising banks, insurance companies, and securities firms. A key dispute centred on whether expanded financial activities by banking organizations should be conducted only through nonbank affiliates of bank holding companies subject to umbrella oversight by the Federal Reserve (Fed) or whether such activities should also be permissible for direct operating subsidiaries of national banks, which were supervised by the Department of the Treasury through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. In addition, there were policy differences with regard to whether authority to engage in such activities should be conditioned on an ongoing basis on the level of compliance by depository institution affiliates with the Community Reinvestment Act, which required that they demonstrate that they were satisfactorily meeting the credit needs of their local communities. These and other differences ultimately were reconciled by a House-Senate conference committee, which began deliberations on the legislation in September following passage of separate bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate earlier in the year. A number of other countries also implemented or debated significant changes to the structure of their financial regulatory systems during 1999. New regulatory agencies with responsibility for consolidated oversight of banks and other financial institutions were established in Australia, South Korea, Japan, and the U.K. Plans for the creation of such an agency were under way in Estonia, and The Netherlands had decided to establish a Council of Financial Supervisors consisting of supervisors of the banking sector, insurance sector, and the stock exchange. While many of these initiatives contemplated some form of umbrella supervision of financial conglomerates, there was as yet no international consensus on what governmental authority or authorities should exercise this responsibility. Meanwhile, after years of preparation, the introduction of the euro took place on Jan. 1, 1999, among the 11 countries constituting the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). (See Sidebar.) The event also had a significant impact on countries outside the EMU, which were required to adjust their systems to the requirements of transacting business in euros. Responsibility for monetary policy within the EMU shifted from the central banks of individual countries to the European Central Bank, and the money markets of the EMU's 11 member countries merged into a single market. This led to the development of two new reference interest rates: the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (EURIBOR) and Euro OverNight Index Average (EONIA). The adoption of a single currency also required modification of domestic payment transfer systems and, by enabling the choice of settling in up to 20 different payment systems all using the euro, complicated liquidity management. To ensure a smooth transition to the euro, individual countries adopted legislation to address, for example, the changed status of their central banks and, of no less importance, the continuity of contracts. The transition to the euro was to be completed with the replacement of individual country currencies with euro banknotes and coins, scheduled to occur by Jan. 1, 2002. The introduction of the euro contributed to an increase in merger activity across Europe, although the transactions were mainly in-market deals, as opposed to cross-border combinations. Banco Bilbao Vizcaya SA and Argentaria (both of Spain) announced plans to merge in October, following the combination earlier in the year of Spanish banking giants Banco Santander and Banco Central Hispano. In France, Banque Nationale de Paris acquired Paribas but was unable to complete a three-way deal involving Socit Gnrale. In the U.K., National Westminster Bank was the object of competing takeover efforts by two rival Scottish banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Scotland. Consolidation also spread to the Japanese banking sector in 1999. A three-way merger was announced in August involving Fuji Bank, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, and Industrial Bank of Japan. Following quickly on the heels of that deal were separate merger announcements by Tokai Bank and Asahi Bank and by Sumitomo Bank and Sakura Bank. Despite the prevalence of in-market deals, one of the more notable transactions of 1999 involved the completion of a trans-Atlantic dealthe acquisition of Bankers Trust Co. in New York by Germany's Deutsche Bank. Within the U.S. there were no mergers in the financial services sector to rival the size and scope of the Citicorp-Travelers combination in 1998. Amid speculation that it would buy brokerage giant Merrill Lynch, the Chase Manhattan Corp. announced a smaller acquisition involving Hambrecht & Quist, a securities firm specializing in the high-technology sector. Although they did not get as much attention, perhaps, as some of the big-ticket merger announcements, there were a number of other significant developments occurring in the global financial markets in 1999. Reflecting the increased supervisory focus on credit- related issues during the yearas highlighted by the consultative papers published by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervisiona number of countries, including Bolivia, the Czech Republic, India, South Korea, Panama, and Venezuela, sought to enhance their banks' practices regarding classification of assets and loan loss provisions. Actions to improve banks' assessment of their country risk were also taken by other bank supervisors, such as those in Belgium, Chile, and The Netherlands. Requirements intended to expand the role of internal and external auditors in the supervisory process were adopted in Estonia, Israel, the Philippines, and other countries. Reforms in accounting and financial-reporting practices were initiated in several countries, including South Korea and Panama, to bring them up to the level of international standards. Meanwhile, supervisors around the world continued their efforts to develop and refine risk-based capital adequacy standards. The Basel Committee's June 1999 proposal for a new capital adequacy framework to replace the Capital Accord that had been in effect since 1988 was particularly significant. The proposed new framework would consist of three pillars: minimum capital requirements, which would seek to incorporate risk weightings of assets based on ratings assigned by recognized credit-assessment institutions such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's; a supervisory review of an institution's capital adequacy and internal-assessment process; and the effective use of market discipline as a lever to strengthen disclosure and encourage safe and sound banking practices. The proposal, which was open for comment until March 31, 2000, attracted considerable attention, particularly its reliance on external ratings. As an alternative, many observers proposed that attention be concentrated on developing risk-based standards that incorporated banks' internal rating systems and, ultimately, portfolio credit risk models. In the U.S. the Fed emphasized the growing need for banking organizations to take greater efforts to ensure that their capital was not only adequate to meet formal regulatory standards but also fully sufficient to support their underlying risk positions. As problems in their banking sectors mounted in connection with the events in Southeast Asia in 1997 and throughout the global economy in August and September 1998, many countries in 1999 instituted measures to enhance their ability to address the issues presented by troubled banks, including, where necessary, through liquidation. Among these measures were the establishment in China and the Philippines of special entities to dispose of problem assets, the expansion of the authority of bank supervisors in the Czech Republic and Estonia to intervene against troubled banks, and the adoption in Japan of the Law Concerning Emergency Measures for the Reconstruction of the Functions of the Financial System, which set forth principles and methods for dealing with failed financial institutions. Additional actions were also taken to combat money laundering. Canada introduced legislation to implement a mandatory suspicious-transactions reporting system, and the Cayman Islands introduced a Code of Practice that provided financial institutions practical guidance in preventing money laundering. Hong Kong reduced the threshold for criminal liability for money laundering in connection with drug trafficking and organized crime, while Luxembourg expanded the activities from which criminal liability for money laundering could arise. In a particularly notable development, the federal banking agencies in the U.S. withdrew proposed know your customer (KYC) regulations after an unprecedented public outcry regarding their potential impact on bank customers' privacy. The subsequent disclosure in congressional hearings of suspected money-laundering activities in connection with private banking and the movement of funds from Russia through U.S. banks triggered new legislative proposals in Congress focused specifically on banks' KYC practices with regard to their foreign customers. Privatization of banks continued in a number of countries, including the Czech Republic, France, Israel, Norway, Poland, and Turkey. Foreign financial institutions developed, expanded, or were given new authority to develop or expand, their presence in other countries such as Canada, China, Poland, and Singapore. Lawrence R. Uhlick Business Overview Americans would likely remember 1999 as the most prosperous year in at least three decades. Not only did the unemployment rate hit a 30-year low, but the securities markets extended a rally that had begun at the start of 1991, bringing in an 85.6% gain in the value of the technology-stock-heavy National Association of Securities Dealers automated quotations (Nasdaq) Composite Index and a 19.5% gain for the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index. Many of the most skeptical observers, such as Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, accepted at least in part the thesis that the United States could maintain a higher level of growth and profits without getting into another inflationary cycle. Even so, businesspeople, investors, and workers wondered whether the boom was a miracle of technology-generated productivity or a speculative bubble. For all the prosperity, a surprisingly large part of the stock market was already in a decline by the end of the year. Mostin truth, allof the spectacular performance of the stock indexes was accounted for by a relatively small number of companies. These included semiconductor producers such as Intel, computer manufacturers such as Dell, solutions companies such as IBM, and, most dramatically, the Internet companies, or dot.coms, such as Amazon.com (see Biographies: Jeff Bezos), America Online (AOL), Yahoo, and Priceline.com. Outside this favoured circle, many profitable companies that did not have dramatic new economy stories saw their stock prices drift lower. Thus, a crash in perhaps 100 or 200 critical stocks would have an enormous negative effect on the perceived wealth of the nation's investors, just as the rise in the price of those stocks led many to the belief that they were getting rich without having to reduce their consumption and save. This wealth effect mattered a lot more in 1999 than it ever had before, as more than half of American households had invested in the stock market, either through the ownership of individual stocks or through mutual funds. Many of those households had made relatively modest gains in earnings from their employment, which was part of the reason for the low inflation readings. Nevertheless, they were able to open their checkbooks to buy autos, homes and home improvements, and, of course, the computers and cellular phones that were the decade's new staples. After decades of inflation, unemployment, Cold War, and intermittent recessions, 1999 might have seemed like a magic year, but the American boom was being shored up by the rest of the world's savings. By the end of 1999, the U.S. was running a current-account deficit with the rest of the world that was the highest in history. At an annual rate of about $360 billion, it represented nearly 4% of all the goods and services produced and consumed in the country for the year. Put another way, the deficit with the rest of the world consumed all of the lendable surpluses of Europe, Japan, South Korea, and China, which among them accounted for 70% of the world's supply of capital. Even in the best of circumstances, it would be impossible for the U.S. to continue to speculate, spend, and grow at the rate it had in the last year of the 1990s. Many American businesspeople had developed a mild pity or even contempt for their European counterparts over the course of the 1990s. There was a collective belief that the political structure of Europe, with the exception of the U.K., would effectively keep the continent from catching up with U.S. productivity and growth. There were exceptional European enterprises, of course, such as Airbus Industrie, the multinational commercial jet maker, and SAP AG, the German developer of enterprise management software. Still, with 10% unemployment and low growth rates in Europe, there was a lot of evidence to support the American triumphalism. What Americans did not consider as carefully as they might have was the dependence they had developed on Europe's exports of capital. The euro, the new unified European Union (EU) currency, was launched in January 1999. (See World Affairs: European Union: Special Report.) Much promoted by EU officials as an alternative to the dollar as an international currency and store of value, it embarrassed its sponsors by dropping some 14% in value against the U.S. dollar over the course of 1999. Part of the reason for this was the flow of capital from Europe to the U.S. to buy securities, which by the fourth quarter was running at an annual rate of $235 billion. All but $81 billion of this went into bonds and other fixed-income securities, which offered a relatively low fixed yield. The American businesspeople, on the other hand, were able to profit from their stock and stock-option holdingseffectively subsidized by the vast foreign credit line. One interesting question as 1999 drew to a close was how much of the world's savings the U.S. would obtain at relatively low interest rates in 2000 and the years ahead. If, as seemed likely, Europe's growth rates accelerated, and if both China and Japan continued to pull out of their periods of low growth, then much higher interest rates would be needed to finance the continued growth of the U.S. economy, given that its corporations and consumers were, on a net basis, dissaving, or spending, 2.5% of the country's total product. That was unprecedented. While the financial underpinnings of the U.S. economy were somewhat shaky, however, the country had spent a huge amount on computers and software and on telecommunications networks tying all those machines together. The most dramatic beneficiary of this was the telecommunications industry, which had to meet a seemingly insatiable demand for bandwidth, or message-carrying capacity. The biggest single impetus for this demand was the expansion of Internet traffic. Transmissions via the Internet included more complex graphics, sound, and full-motion visual images, all of which required either high-capacity cable or fibre-optic cable that had the necessary bandwidth. In 1999, fibre-optic cable capacity was being increased by 100% every nine months. Cellular telephones and wireless data transmission also continued to expand; 31% of American consumers had cellular phones by the end of 1999, up from 25% just two years earlier. As late as the 1980s, the telecommunications industry had been financially stable and was growing at a moderate pace. By 1999 there were winning companies such as Qualcomm, Inc., which developed an innovative, high-quality cellular-telephone technology. Its stock rose more than 20-fold in the year, and it had revenues of nearly $4 billion. By way of contrast, Iridium, Inc. a go-anywhere mobile phone company that depended on a multibillion-dollar array of satellites, went bankrupt in July, its equity effectively wiped out and its bonds dropping to 17 cents on the dollar. An industry that had been composed of steady monopolies turned into a competitive free-for-all. The demand for new and replacement personal computers also held up in 1999, propelled partly by price cuts, partly by the appeal of fast new machines, and partly by a perceived need to get Y2K compliant systems in place before the year 2000. The computer software industry underwent two revolutionary shocks. First was the successful antitrust suit by the U.S. Department of Justice against Microsoft Corp., which was seen as a potential cause for a breakup of the company. Ironically, however, any harsh treatment of the company would have to face the political reality that a large fraction of the middle-class public owned Microsoft shares, and that could easily lead to a backlash against the government litigation. The judge's finding against Microsoft also led to an increasing investor and user interest in computer operating systems other than Microsoft's own Windows system. The major beneficiaries were companies that wrote software based on the open Linux operating system. (See Biographies: Linus Torvalds.) The second shock for the software industry was the extent to which companies writing large enterprise software programs were losing market share to companies that based their applications on Internet protocols. This could be seen as part of the democratization or networking of software. The enterprise software companies such as the German SAP, or PeopleSoft Inc. and Oracle Corp. in the United States, had based their communications within corporate communications networks on proprietary software rather than the increasingly popular Internet. SAP, which made its name by offering one large system to tie together all the elements of a company's computing, saw its reputation hurt by the difficulties several large companies such as Hershey Foods Corp. had in implementing the huge, monolithic programs. Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon in the valuation of companies was the extraordinary stock market performance of the pure Internet companies. These companies, few of which earned any profits during the year, saw increases in their stock prices of up to several thousand percent. These valuations could not be based on increases in profits or even revenues but were based just on investors' hopes that at some distant point in the future a selection of companies using the Internet would be able to displace established commercial competitors using bricks and mortar facilities. Despite the high stock prices of companies such as Amazon.com or Priceline.com, there was an increasing realization that moving commerce to the Internet would still require conventional facilities. This led to enormous interest in the public stock offering of United Parcel Service, whose trucks were needed to deliver many of the items ordered on-line from the Internet companies. (See also Computers and Information Systems.) Growth in high-tech companies had a spillover effect on other American industries. For example, auto sales hit a record level of 17 million vehicles in 1999. The prosperity of the auto manufacturers fed through to their suppliers of components as well, so even old economy firms such as Genuine Parts Co. had 1520% increases in sales. Nevertheless, the worldwide trend toward consolidation and globalization continued, with the merger that formed DaimlerChrysler AG leading to further rationalization of auto manufacturing in both Europe and the U.S. The effective takeover of Nissan Motor Co., a Japanese auto company, by France's Renault that was announced in March would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. The Japanese, however, realized that even their vaunted automobile industry needed Western-style rationalization and cost cutting. While Detroit's overall sales numbers and production were extremely strong, domestic manufacturers lost market share for traditional passenger cars, as distinct from light trucks or sport utility vehicles. Despite years of improvement in the quality ratings of American-built cars, it seemed that consumers still believed that European cars were better made. European sales of passenger cars in the U.S. were up 30% on the year, while Asian manufacturers sold 8% more cars and American manufacturers 5% more cars. Not all American auto manufacturers were equally affected by the trend; in the last two months of the year, Ford Motor Co. car sales were up more than 20% over 1998 levels. Ford was perceived to have more advanced styling for passenger cars such as its Taurus than was to be found in the General Motors Corp. line. Home builders also benefited from consumers' cashing in their stock market gains to acquire material goods. The growth in residential construction peaked at the beginning of 1999, however, and while orders for new homes continued to increase, the industry was weakened by the increase in interest rates over the course of the year. Manufacturers of wallboard and other construction materials saw their inventories rising owing to oversupply, and it appeared as though new home sales were likely to decline in the following year. Overproduction also hurt the companies in the manufactured-housing industry, which served the less-affluent home-buying public. Not only were their customers not major beneficiaries of the stock market rise, but also credit for marginal buyers became tighter over the course of the year. While wage pressures were low over the course of 1999, the pickup in manufacturing in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and the rest of Asia put upward pressure on raw materials prices, most notably on the price of oil and its products. Over the course of 1999, oil prices more than doubled to $26 per barrel. In addition to increased demand for oil, OPEC was better able to enforce production quotas in 1999 than it had been for several years, which reduced the potential supply. American electric and gas utilities, which for decades had been relatively stable, low-risk, moderate-return companies, began to show far greater volatility in their results as deregulation took effect. A company such as Enron Corp. of Texas, which aggressively reorganized for a competitive environment, showed sales increases of more than 25% and a profit increase of more than 35% in 1999. In contrast, the traditional Florida Power & Light Co. saw sales increase by only 0.6% and earnings by 1.4%. The energy service companies, which provide the equipment and contracted services that the energy companies require, were still recovering from the cuts in exploration and production budgets from low prices in 1998. Schlumberger Ltd., a key exploration service company, experienced a sales decline of over 20% and an earnings decline of over 42%. Steel companies also benefited from increased demand for their products; hot rolled coil steel prices rose by approximately 40%, to $310 per ton. A basic steel producer, AK Steel Holding Corp., had sales increase by over 60% and earnings increase by over 15%. Aluminum producers also did well on the back of a 23% increase in prices to $1.552 per kilogram (69 cents per pound). The two largest American producers of aluminum, Alcoa Inc. and the Reynolds Metals Co., agreed to a merger, which continued a trend among the basic industries to consolidation. Since commodity materials had become a smaller part of the industrial costs, there was much less opposition to these mergers than there would have been in previous years. Domestic commodity producers were also able to justify consolidation and cost cutting even in prosperous times by pointing to import competition driven by ever-lower shipping costs and tariffs. Paper manufacturers, which had been plagued by overcapacity in previous years, were able to control their tendency to overinvestment in 1999, adding only 1% in additional capacity. That made it possible for their price increases to stick, which brought major companies such as the Georgia-Pacific Corp. back into profitability. The lumber sector of the forest-products industry profited from the dramatic increase in prices brought on by high levels of construction, with 2 4 boards increasing in price from $146 to $203 per cubic metre ($345 to $480 per thousand board feet). Perhaps the most frustrated commodity producers were the gold-mining companies. They had waited for years for an increase in the gold price to a sustainable level above $300 per troy ounce (1 troy oz = 31.1 g). When the European central banks announced in September that they would place a cap on their sales of gold from reserves, the price of the metal briefly rocketed from about $270 to more than $330 per ounce, but it quickly fell back to below $300. Many of the gold miners actually lost money on the price increase, since they had entered into complicated forward sales contracts that required them to put up expensive cash margin if the price increased. In the financial services industry, 1999 was the year that Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a Depression-era law that kept banks and securities dealers from operating under the same corporate roof. Even though the banks and dealers had found many ways to reduce the law's effect over the years, the deregulation was expected to lead to a dramatic consolidation of the nation's financial system. The biggest single corporate beneficiary was Citigroup Inc., which was formed out of the merger of Citibank, the Travelers' Group, and Salomon Smith Barney Inc. If the law had not been passed, it might have been necessary for the combined company to be broken up. The Wall Street securities brokers had a spectacular year, with huge fees for arranging corporate underwriting and mergers and acquisitions added to profits on equity trading. The only financial sector to do badly was bond investors, who suffered their second worst year, the worst having been 1990. The growing economy with its demand for funds and fears of inflation led to an increase in short-term interest rates of more than one percentage point, and in long-term rates of about 1 1/3%. For most banks and dealers, the losses created by those interest-rate increases were more than offset by the increases in equity prices and transaction fees. Those sectors of the economy that depended most directly on the government had mixed results, since there was still some restraint on the willingness of the executive branch or Congress to spend the increased tax revenues. The defense manufacturers saw the first increase in procurement since 1991 as the Pentagon's budget went up by 2%, with more increases on the way. Commercial aircraft orders, principally for the Boeing Co., were weak owing to cutbacks by financially stressed Asian carriers and to increased competition from Airbus Industrie. Managed-care companies, popularly known as heath maintenance organizations, or HMOs, were adversely affected by federal government cost controls on reimbursement for patients covered by its insurance, which had the effect of reducing spending by $200 billion. Pharmaceutical companies, while still highly profitable, were also under pressure to cut prices. Pfizer Inc., which in 1998 had a windfall from sales of Viagra, its drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, saw its 1999 profits decline by over 12%. The Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. saw a slight declineless than 1%in its profits. Some companies with a stream of new products, though, did extraordinarily well. Amgen Inc., a biotechnology company, enjoyed an increase in profits of more than 30%. As for the question of whether 1999 was the last of an unsustainable bubble economy or the beginning of a new era led by digital electronic technology, the answer most likely, based on past such boom years, was that it was both. There was an element of bubble in the prices of stocks, but there was also a dramatic expansion of the possibilities for Internet commerce and the other fruits of decades of computer industry development. John Dizard Contributors Adams, Andy. Editor and Publisher, Sumo World. Author of Sumo; Sumo World Record Book. sports and games: Judo; Wrestling: Sumo Ahn, Ki-suk. Assistant Editor, Shindonga of Donga Ilbo. biographies (in part) Alder, Phillip. Syndicated Bridge Columnist and Teacher. Author of Get Smarter at Bridge. sports and games: Contract Bridge Alexander, Steve. Freelance Writer. computers and information systems Allaby, Michael. Writer and Lecturer. 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Associate Editor, Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. biographies (in part); obituaries (in part); sports and games: Sidebar; world affairs: Bolivia; Uruguay Deeb, Marius K. Professor, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C. Author of Political Parties and Democracy in Egypt. world affairs: Egypt de la Barre, Kenneth. Director, the Bridge Group. world affairs: Arctic Regions Denselow, Robin. Rock Music Critic, The Guardian; Current Affairs Reporter, BBC Television. Author of When the Music's Over: The Politics of Pop. performing arts: Music: Popular (international) Dietz, Henry A. Professor, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. world affairs: Peru Dizard, John W. Editor, Bondnewz.com. economic affairs: Business Overview Dooling, Dave. Freelance Aerospace Writer, D2 Associates. Coauthor of Engineering Tomorrow. mathematics and physical sciences: Space Exploration Dowd, Siobhan. Columnist, Literary Review (London); Glimmer Train (U.S.). Author of This Prison Where I Live and Roads of the Roma. literature: English: United Kingdom; social protection: Special Report: Women at the Crossroads: Advances and Setbacks Ehringer, Gavin Forbes. Sports and Outdoor Writer, specializing in equestrian events, rodeos, skiing, and snowboarding. sports and games: Bobsledding and Luge; Introduction; Rodeo; Skiing: Snowboarding; Special Report: Arms Race in Sporting Goods Fagan, Brian. Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara. Author of Time Detectives. anthropology and archaeology: Archaeology: Western Hemisphere Farr, D.M.L. Professor Emeritus of History, Carleton University, Ottawa. world affairs: Canada; Special Report: Nunavut: The Birth of a New Territory Feketekuty, Geza. Trade Policy Consultant and Professor of Commercial Diplomacy. Author of The New Trade Agenda and International Trade in Services: An Overview and Blueprint for Negotiations. world affairs: Sidebar Fendell, Robert J. Board Member, Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance. Columnist, Florida Sports Scene. Author of Encyclopedia of Motor Racing Greats. sports and games: Automobile Racing: U.S. Auto Racing Fenwick, M.J. Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, The University of Memphis. literature: Spanish: Latin America Fisher, Sharon. Central European Specialist, London. world affairs: Czech Republic; Slovakia Flagg, Gordon. Managing Editor, American Libraries. libraries and museums: Libraries (United States) Flink, Steve. Senior Correspondent, Tennis Week magazine; Author of The Greatest Tennis Matches of the 20th Century. sports and games: Tennis Flores, Ramona Monette S. Professor, University of the Philippines; Editorial Consultant and Freelance Writer. media and publishing: Radio (international); Television (international) Follett, Christopher. Denmark Correspondent, The Times; Danish Correspondent, Radio Sweden; Newscaster, Radio Denmark; Local Correspondent for Reuters News Agency, Copenhagen. Author of Fodspor paa Cypern. world affairs: Denmark Fridovich, Irwin. James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. life sciences: Molecular Biology (in part) Fridovich-Keil, Judith L. Associate Professor, Department of Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Ga. life sciences: Molecular Biology (in part) Friskin, Sydney E. Hockey Correspondent, The Times. sports and games: Billiard Games: Snooker; Field Hockey Fuller, Elizabeth. Editor, Newsline, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Prague. world affairs: Armenia; Azerbaijan; Georgia Gallagher, Tom. Professor of Peace