Some readers derided my story in last November’s column where I asked: “Is it bonfire night or bonfire of the vanities at Credit Suisse?” I criticized the bank for its recent compensation payouts against a backdrop of poor share performance and disappointing third-quarter results.

I am a rebel. Non-conformity is my middle name. So perhaps it is not surprising that four separate sources sent me the UBS corporate wear dress guide for women and men. This 50-page document is targeted at employees in the Swiss retail branches such as reception staff, “event attendants, security staff and all personnel working in Limousine Service”. Note to Ossie Grübel: why haven’t you sacked all your limousine staff? We are living in an age of the new frugal, and last time I looked UBS wasn’t paying a dividend to its shareholders. Anyway, these guidelines proved to be the comedy highlight of a dreary December. And I must reprimand a humourless reader who sent me the document with the haughty message: “I cannot understand why UBS is still wasting money on such rubbish.”

December is a month for reflection: reflection on what has passed and what might happen.

Is it bonfire night or bonfire of the vanities at Credit Suisse? The Swiss bank has reported mediocre third quarter results for 2010. Group net income plunged by 74% (year over year) to SFr609 million, pre-tax profits at the investment bank were down 50% from the second quarter and group return on equity was 7%.

HSBC's succession saga; Deutsche's Q3 results; Wuffli's ethics and globalization; M&A Mee

I am involved in a spat with the sisterhood.

The demise of the Prudential deal together with inhospitable debt and equity markets implies that the second-quarter numbers for global investment banks will be bad.

“Nomura was in a strategic corner: they were trapped in Japan. They bought the Lehman operations for virtually nothing. If I criticize the Japanese for anything – it is that they are not involved enough in the investment banking business."

Vikram Pandit has taken Citi from a place where the institution was written off as a basket case to being a share beloved by star hedge fund managers and widely seen as a buy for widows’ and orphans’ pension pots.

As mentioned in a previous column, I am often asked who the market’s rising stars are. So I have decided to feature, from time to time, certain financiers whose careers have momentum and about whom you will hear a lot more in the next few years.

It certainly appears as if Planet Finance is thriving once again – notwithstanding public hostility, bonus taxes and politicians baying for blood.

Credit Suisse’s Performance Incentive Plan (PIP) paid out and some lucky bankers became very rich indeed. I’m not talking 'buy a magnum of champagne' rich.

For the moment, Goldman will no longer be the safe choice or even the first choice for clients.

Sid Prasad worked at Nomura before he joined Merrill Lynch. I have been keeping my eye on Nomura since I met with Sadeq Sayeed, the chief executive of the EMEA operation, last August. Before that meeting, I wrote in my June 2009 column: "It is conceivable that the Lehman acquisition might turn out to be an expensive mistake for the Japanese... I always worry when loyalty is purchased with hefty guarantees." Indeed now, as the last tranche of the guarantees given in 2008 is paid, Nomura is suffering significant defections by former Lehman staff such as Siggi Thorkelsson, head of equities in Asia; Thomas Siegmund, co-head of fixed income in the region; and Jane Wang, vice-chairman of China investment banking. Indeed, every day another senior resignation seems to hit the screen. In mid-March, it was announced that Sayeed himself would be "retiring" from Nomura. No immediate successor was named, which led me to believe that there was an odour of huff about the parting. The following day we learnt that Nomura was forming a new global wholesale division that would be run by Jesse Bhattal, the former head of Lehman in Asia. Bhattal will be based in Hong Kong and will join Nomura’s executive management board. A commentator opined: "Sayeed lost out to Bhattal. Bhattal’s appointment is a sop to the Lehman people who are all threatening to leave now that they have been paid." I look forward to catching up with Bhattal whom I have not seen for many years. However, I believe he has a huge challenge ahead of him: he needs to forge a focused strategy, develop an expertise where Nomura truly excels and decide what to do about the lack of a US platform.

It’s weird how at the moment all roads lead back to Lehman Brothers. In mid-March, Anton Valukas, appointed by a US court to examine Lehman’s failure, finally delivered his 2,200-page report. It revealed a crucial new piece of information: Lehman had used repo transactions (so-called Repo 105 transactions) involving some $50 billion of assets to shrink its balance sheet, and consequently its leverage ratios, at crucial quarter-end dates in 2008. This gives rise to accusations of balance-sheet manipulation, inadequate disclosure and signing off on misleading accounts. One commentator wailed: "All this should have been reported to and approved by the audit committee." It is not clear that this happened but in any event I would point out to Wailing Commentator that the Lehman board appeared to be friends of Fuld rather than supporters of shareholders. I was the first journalist to spot this peculiarity. I examined the Lehman board in May 2006 and hinted strongly that it was not fit for purpose. Half the board were septuagenarians and few had relevant experience. The group included a former theatrical producer and a retired female navy rear-admiral: both of whom sat on the firm’s finance and risk committee. Now everyone talks about the failure of the Lehman board. Isn’t it a little late for such pontificating? In future, please read the Abigail with attitude column diligently and take note of my musings.

There is a murmuring in the London market that Merrill is a mess. Or rather that Bank of America Merrill Lynch is a mess. That sentiment was exacerbated in March when two senior European FIG bankers, Amir Hoveyda and Sid Prasad, resigned. Hoveyda lost out to Alastair Borthwick and Lisa Carnoy to run global capital markets after the previous head, Bruce Thompson, was promoted to be chief risk officer. Some say that Borthwick wants to focus the firm’s energies more on corporate and frequent borrower business. Paul Richards, who once ran the global debt syndicate function, will succeed Hoveyda as head of debt capital markets, EMEA, while retaining his current role as head of international debt syndicate. Marc Tempelman steps up to be head of FIG DCM in Europe. This is also a sign that we are in a different era: in the heady days of 2006 and 2007, Merrill was renowned for its financial institution franchise. Bankers such as Greg Fleming, Andrea Orcel, Matthew Greenburgh and Amir Hoveyda were revered as the new masters of the universe. Remember it was Merrill that advised the RBS consortium on its bid in 2007 for ABN Amro. Now it looks as if the carnival has moved on.

It could be argued that the Goldman allure is waning and that all those years of invincible isolation have unleashed a backlash of Goldie bashing. However, I discern a more ominous development.

There is often a transaction that defines a period. It’s the financial equivalent of remembering where you were when Princess Diana died or John F Kennedy was shot.

So there is Monty perched astride the bull that once was Merrill Lynch. But what of his former boss, the robotic John Thain? Thain, whose most notorious legacy to Merrill was a $1.2 million refurbishment of former chief executive Stan O’Neal’s office, resurfaced in early February. He was appointed as chief executive of CIT, the lender to small and medium-sized US business, which is emerging from bankruptcy. There is no doubt that a few years ago Thain would not have taken the headhunter’s call if the initials CEO had been mentioned in the same sentence as the letters CIT. After all, Thain was a true master of the universe: a former co-president of Goldman Sachs and a respected chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange. It is a sobering lesson to us all but one misjudgement can bring the juggernaut of a successful career to a shuddering halt. To spend over $1 million of company funds on redecorating your office (and adjacent conference room) in a year when investment banks were bleeding to death shows a sense of entitlement that is indefensible. While Thain was signing the chits for his new furniture, he was grovelling to sovereign wealth funds to replenish the firm’s capital and chopping the bills for fresh flowers at Merrill’s headquarters. Obviously, Thain was aware that there was a need to economize. At least employees had the chance to enjoy the flowers. Few of them probably had the occasion to perch their pert buttocks on the $35,000 commode in Thain’s private quarters. Thain is fortunate to be given a second chance. Ironically, the previous CIT chief executive, Jeff Peek, was a former Merrill man too. Peek left the investment bank in 2001 when he was passed over for the job of president and COO which went to O’Neal.

Cuomo's allegations surrounding Bank of America's former and current heads are perplexing.

IFR awards; HSBC cocktails; the US banks' Q4 reporting, or, a party without the punchbowl.

Last year was an odd one: waves of euphoria and despair that normally unfold over decades were compressed into 12 months. In the early part of 2009, you could smell the fear: even the wealthy were paralyzed by panic. Of course, with hindsight, one can see all the elements were in place for a massive boom in financial assets.

Barclays issued its third-quarter trading update on November 10, the same day as HSBC announced its results. Ten days later, its shares have slipped about 11%. In fact, Barclays’ share price is down 20% since the Qatar sovereign investment fund sold part of its stake in the UK bank on October 20. Another interesting footnote to the credit crunch has been how supposedly strategic sovereign wealth funds have transformed themselves into opportunistic short-term traders, avaricious for a quick profit. Some say that Barclays’ interim trading statement was disappointing. Group profit before tax for the nine months ended September 30 fell by 19% to £4.5 billion, profit before tax in the investment banking and investment management division was £1.9 billion (down 38% from 2008), impairments rose in the UK retail banking division and the cost/income ratio spiralled higher in the investment bank. It should be noted, however, that last year Barclays had a substantial one-off gain on the Lehman acquisition, and that it continues to increase revenues faster than expenses with a positive cost: income jaws of 7%. The bank also said that it expected impairments for the full year to be around the bottom of its anticipated range for 2009 at £9 billion.

"Glamour and football-style pay packages have rarely been a feature of the HSBC landscape. Today, we realize that this is how a well-managed bank conducts itself."

"Life is fragile," Jamie Forese, Citi’s head of markets, mused. We were sitting in his office at Citi’s New York investment banking headquarters. It was the eighth anniversary of the September 11 World Trade Center bombings. I thought of Jamie’s words when the 61-year-old legendary banker Bruce Wasserstein, chairman and chief executive of Lazard Ltd, died unexpectedly in mid-October. Wasserstein, like Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, was a Credit Suisse First Boston refugee who went on to found his own firm, become a billionaire and leave an indelible mark on the financial firmament.

Merckle may have committed suicide because his empire was floundering but if I were a senior manager of a bank that is still in receipt of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp), I might feel a little suicidal myself. In late September, I read a document enticingly entitled: ‘Practical considerations for implementing a luxury expenditures policy’, produced by Navigant Consulting. I don’t think I have laughed so much since details of the refurbishment of former Merrill CEO John Thain’s office surfaced.

I congratulate Morgan Stanley’s board for having made a decision rather than tiptoeing around the succession story until it became the elephant in the room. But there will be challenges ahead.

Bankers like to think of themselves as entrepreneurs and when the leveraged finance market died many specialists were reborn as restructuring professionals.