1.   Banks have also been hurt in Japan, the regional powerhouse and a particularly large lender to South Korea.

2.   BSCH is now a regional powerhouse and, consequently, a European superbank.

3.   But it moves National City shoulder-to-shoulder with such other regional powerhouses as Norwest Corp.

4.   China has reduced inflation, and banks are again lending in the regional powerhouse.

5.   McGregor denies harboring any bias against big business, and acknowledges its role in making South Africa a regional economic powerhouse.

6.   Now, he oversees an athletic program that fields regional powerhouses in almost every sport.

7.   Once a hard-scrabble Zionist frontier, Israel is now a regional economic powerhouse.

8.   Quaker bought Snapple hoping to use its marketing savvy to vault the brand from a regional powerhouse into a national product.

9.   Salvadorans count on hard work, privatization and a modernized regulatory framework to make El Salvador a regional economic powerhouse once again.

10.   Still, he is credited with transforming Syria from a backwater nation into a semideveloped one and, more importantly, into a regional powerhouse.