The gaps were found in computer records studied by a financial consultancy, Alvarez and Marsal, Cypriot media say.

BBC: Key data missing at troubled Bank of Cyprus - inquiry

Although premiums for such insurance increased steeply after Enron's collapse, they fell by 10% this year, according to a recent survey by Tillinghast, a financial consultancy.

ECONOMIST: Non-executive directors

One company that has considered a merger in the past year is the Trinsum Group, which is itself the product of a union in early 2007 between Marakon, a strategy consultancy, and Integrated Finance, a financial- and risk-consulting company that includes Robert Merton, a Nobel prize-winning economist, among its founders.

ECONOMIST: Management consulting

Tim van Biesen of Bain, a consultancy, believes that patients will need some kind of financial incentive to use smart pills.

ECONOMIST: Pills get smart

In the 1990s, having taken big losses on overleveraged deals like the RJR buy-out, Forstmann Little's rivals replaced their leaders and grew into financial conglomerates, managing a wider variety of funds and going into consultancy.

ECONOMIST: Ted Forstmann

At least a dozen are in the pipeline this year, says Halter Financial Group, an Argyle, Tex. consultancy that specializes in the transaction.

FORBES: Through The Back Door

Aditya Mittal, president and chief financial officer of his father's company, told a recent London conference (run by a consultancy, World Steel Dynamics, and Metal Bulletin) that one of the emerging majors would be bound to be Chinese, despite the extreme fragmentation of China's industry at the moment.

ECONOMIST: Steel industry

But a number of cajas, representing as much as 12% of the financial system by assets, are shut out of the markets, according to Analistas Financieros Internacionales, a consultancy.

ECONOMIST: The euro crisis

Bob Gach, of Accenture, a consultancy, reckons that within a few years the industry could be dominated by only four to six global financial-services firms.

ECONOMIST: New dangers