  I report here on the (first) direct extraction of the running charm quark
mass m_c(\nu) from the D-meson sum rules, and on the implications of this
result for the estimate of the leptonic decay constants f_{D_s}. The outputs:
m_c(M_c)=(1.08\pm 0.11) GeV, f_{D}= (1.52\pm 0.16)f_\pi, f_{D_s}= (1.75\pm
0.18)f_\pi and f_B=(1.44\pm 0.07)f_\pi are in good agreement with the existing
sum rule results obtained using the pole mass. In particular, the result
f_D\approx f_B supports early '87 sum rule results \cite{SNFB}, which indicated
a huge 1/m correction to the heavy quark symmetry expectation. This talk is
based on the paper hep-ph/9712386 and updates the discussions given there.
