estimated at $3 billion, has been voted the most popular man in a poll of Italian school kids, who put him ahead of Jesus Christ and Michael Jackson.

That is not so surprising when one considers that Mr. Berlusconi, who was in Bermuda a few days ago taking a well-earned break, owns the soccer-crazy country's most successful club, AC Milan.

Mr. Berlusconi, 55, is less popular, though, with the Italian Government, which ruled recently that his ownership of Milan's Il Giornale newspaper gave him an illegal monopoly of the media.

Displaying all the business acumen that made him his fortune, Mr. Berlusconi got around this technicality with consummate ease -- he sold the paper to his brother, Paolo. STK MANY of Bermuda's foreign currency dealers will have made themselves huge end-of-year bonuses out of last week's frantic trading on the world's markets.

Every trader loves a volatile market, and they don't come much more volatile than was the case last Wednesday when the European Community's Exchange Rate Mechanism collapsed.

But some of the factors affecting global financial markets would make you laugh if it wasn't for the fact that there were billions of dollars riding on them.

In order to capitalise on last week's chaos, currency dealers would have studied charts, calculated trends, analysed figures and, wait for it, listened to a countless stream of rumours.

A good rumour is the stock in trade of any dealer and many a price has fluctuated wildly on the strength of a half-baked whisper that later proved to be totally unfounded.

Yet they fly around the trading rooms of the world at an astonishing pace on a daily basis and dealers are forced to sit up and take notice of anything that could affect market prices.

They have to decide if it's really true that ... President Bush is close to death, Prime Minister John Major has resigned, President Mitterrand of France has prostate cancer, a pharmaceutical company has found a cure for baldness, or is that wrinkles.

These are all genuine rumours that have been circulated recently, via telephones, fax machines and financial news services such as Reuter, Telerate, Bloomberg and Knight Ridder that all traders' computers are hooked up to.

"I remember once when President Bush fell down while he was jogging and the rumour came around that he had suffered a heart attack,'' said Ms Stasia Dearing, the Bank of Butterfield's head of treasury.

"At the end of the day quite a few rumours prove to be unfounded but you can't ignore them.'' Mr. Jan Birkenheim, head of treasury at the Bank of Bermuda, said much of the gossip was started by investors who had taken a particular position in the market place and wanted to capitalise on it.

"People do deliberately start rumours,'' he said. "There's such competition out there that an eye catching headline will obviously cause some movement in the market.

"We get headlines first on our computers and then it's followed up by analysis and further information, often quoting people denying the rumour.'' Rumours or not, Bermuda two largest banks have cleaned up over the past few weeks but currency traders have not had time to celebrate yet. Some have been getting in as early as 4 a.m. and working until late at night.

They were at it again yesterday (Sunday) with traders at the Bank of Bermuda in at 5 p.m. to catch the start of trading in Wellington, New Zealand.

They were then planning to catch the result of the French referendum on the European Community's Maastricht Treaty, which was expected to set the markets off again all this week.