Financial reform usually entails a variety of steps to ease portfolio controls and directed credit, as well as to limit government intervention in the determination of interest rates. Reducing barriers to competition in the financial sector, scaling back government ownership of financial intermediaries, allowing new financial products to appear, limiting excessive taxation of banks and other intermediaries, and reducing restrictions on financial dealings of domestic households and businesses with counterparts abroad also may be a part of reform efforts. The success of these steps, though admittedly difficult to define (see Chapter 13), may depend on the order in which reforms are undertaken and especially on the initial conditions both in the financial sector and in the economy at large. This chapter reviews the state of the economies and their financial systems on the eve of reform, provides an overview of the path of reform chosen by the authorities, and briefly reviews some of the features of the period following the onset of reforms. It represents a very brief summary of the reform stories, aimed especially at those who do not have the time for the individual cases that are analyzed in much greater detail in subsequent chapters or who first want an overview of some of the main elements of the reform episodes. In keeping with a guide's brief, no grand conclusions are ventured here. But we don our analysts' hats again in Chapter 13, where we attempt to draw lessons from the analytical papers and case studies, and to construct a reform strategy for authorities contemplating financial reform.