Even as they delever, shed assets, raise capital and hoard liquidity against further hits, banks know they must also fundamentally change the rotten underlying business practices that led them to disaster. If they can’t, even those that manage to survive this disaster will fall victim to the next. That’s if the regulators don’t shut them down first. Peter Lee reports on an industry trying to relearn the basics.

SpencerLake has joined HSBC as global head of debt capital markets after 17 years at Merrill Lynch. Lake had only recently been appointed to a newly created role of head of debt capital markets for the Asia-Pacific region at Merrill. He will be based in London and manage HSBC’s 250-strong origination team. He reports to Daniel Palmer, head of global capital markets.

Asia's high-net-worth individuals are getting richer quicker than those anywhere else. Wealth management has never been so competitive in the region but is a potential goldmine for the smartest bankers. Chris Leahy reports.

Once branded the internet dullard, Merrill Lynch is on the offensive. More than a decade after the brokerage firm bought a bank in Utah, it’s launching a nationwide retail banking operation, based on the internet, and paying money-market rates on insured deposits. That, and its plans for a banking and investment-services joint-venture with HSBC, may take its head off the merger block. Antony Currie reports

"Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young." So Dr Johnson had it. In the case of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), an institution founded by Scots and still governed by one, it has grown to be the world's most profitable financial group. The unique international officer culture that has driven it –­ young men caught young, trained up, messed together, posted, reposted, in the bank for life and rarely back in the UK ­ will have to change, but it's bending and adapting rather than breaking. Steven Irvine reports on its fitness for the 21st century.