"We were sure of it before. Now we’re double sure of it"
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’ chairman and chief executive, is fully aware of regulators’ concerns about compensation following a meeting with the New York Fed
(see Goldman pays the price of success)
"We actually quite like to be underestimated, and for a long time I think we were. Perhaps that’s less the case now"
Peter Sands, chief executive of Standard Chartered, knows the bank is perceived as one of the winners from the chaos of the credit crisis
(see Standard Chartered goes on the march)
"There is absolutely nothing on my CV to suggest that I can manage something this size. The last business I ran was 4,000 people, so we’ll have to see"
John Havens, head of the Institutional Clients Group at Citi, knows he still has a lot to prove as the man in charge of turning around its investment banking business
(see The light comes on at Citi)
"Some of them have some interesting branch networks. It would be remiss not to have a look. But the devil will be in the detail"
Jacko Maree, chief executive of Standard Bank, is wary of opportunities in Nigeria’s beleaguered banking sector
(see Standard plots a path out of South Africa)
"It is only an arrogant culture in banking that could have fooled itself to think that the Commission was not serious about change"
ING’s management found out just how serious EC competition commissioner Neelie Kroes was when she forced the separation of the bank’s banking and insurance businesses