| Also shortlisted in this category: |
Look at any of the largest banking franchises and it’s easy to pick holes in their businesses. Take the biggest of them all, Citi: a firm that seems to do well everywhere it operates, but at the same time has frustrated countless talented managers as they attempt to control the sheer scale of its operations.
Or HSBC, which excels in so many areas but has noticeably failed, so far, to make inroads in the two markets it has most urgently targeted: the US and global investment banking.
Then there’s JPMorgan Chase: many of the numbers look good but a sense persists that it, in combining, two great firms have lost their identity and are still searching for a new one.
Deutsche Bank is a trading and capital markets powerhouse with a domestic banking base that often seems more of a hindrance than a help. The two UK challengers, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, have admitted that their global plans fall short with their tussle for control of ABN Amro. Alessandro Profumo has transformed UniCredit, but the integration of HVB is not fully settled and its merger with Capitalia creates the possibility of too many tensions in too short a space of time.