"We've got 3,000 targets to do over the whole conversion process," said a spokesman for the US investment bank who had just attended one of the meetings. "We've done well and we're slightly ahead of schedule."

He said some of those targets might take only a minute or two to meet while others were more complicated and took time. But the overall feeling at the meeting -- attended by about 30 of the several hundred euro conversion staff -- was that the process was going smoothly.

Salomon, like a large number of major banks, held several dress rehearsals before this weekend. "What we've done is undergone a gates-and-dams process, which means we don't send any bad data downstream," the spokesman said.

Majorfinancial trade associations, which have staff on stand-by in case anything goes wrong, also said the early indications were positive.

"Our phone is not ringing, which is a very good sign," said Cliff Dammers, secretary general at the International Primary Markets Association (IPMA), a group representing banks and firms which underwrite international securities.

"It seems to be going smoothly. There was an enormous amount of preparation done for the conversion weekend and it's paying off."

Staff working over the weekend on the project in London are estimated to total 30,000 as banks get ready for what has been seen as a great leap into the unknown on Monday.

Despite all the dry-runs, many bankers have said no one will have a real sense of how well the markets have adapted to the euro until then. As a result, some said traders in the first stages will be hesitant.

"I expect business will generally be quite slow on Monday to start with because people will be confused about what to expect," said MarjaAlperi, vice president at Merita Bank in Helsinki. "The first week it will be like training, and then it will be trading."

So far at least, Alperi, who is in charge of euro coordination for trade in capital markets for the bank, is confident. "All our procedures for the systems are going according to schedule."