Macquarie Bank is a rare type of investment bank. It has made returns on equity of over 20% for 10 years by constantly moving into new business areas such as property securitization. Steven Irvine meets its managing director Allen Moss - a man who eschews ostentation and wears pens in his pocket - and head of infrastructure and asset group Nicholas Moore.

If you were trying to scupper the career of an over-zealous colleague, this is the sort of financing mandate you might want to throw in their direction: first, make it a commodity deal (preferably not oil which is suddenly showing signs of revival); second, set the deal in a developing country, at a time when emerging markets are out of vogue, and local currency financing is scarce. Finally, throw in a little political difficulty, such as the arrest of a former president, which leads to fighting on the streets and the threat of trade sanctions.

There aren't many real ex-rocket scientists for hire, but another area investment banks might look at is nuclear engineering - a skill that's becoming less sought after these days. Merrill Lynch's affable new hire Dante Roscini spent five years designing nuclear power plant before dwindling enthusiasm for the nuclear industry prompted a rethink. After business school he ended up at Goldman Sachs in 1988.

Public Pfandbriefe sold by German mortgage banks are a familiar sight in international capital markets. But less well-known is what's swimming around in the underlying pools of collateral - and how the issuers earn their money. Another Orange County in the making? Marcus Walker investigates.

Mix telephone evangelism with telephone banking and you have... Bank of Scotland's latest direct banking venture. The bank already has a UK operation in partnership with a supermarket chain, J Sainsbury, but it has chosen a more controversial partner for the US in the form of Marion "Pat" Robertson.

Most people who meet Alexandra McLeod, Bank of America's new European head of corporate banking, have trouble placing her accent. Americans think she's British; the English assume she's from North America. In fact hers is the perfect transatlantic background for the bank's senior officer in Europe.

The EBRD's shareholders demanded that the bank be big in Russia. The investment bankers running the place responded by making deals. The result? €261.2 million ($284 million) of losses last year more than half due to provisioning against the Russian portfolio. New president Horst Köhler says that strategy not volume must drive programmes in future - corporate governance, institution building and lending to small enterprises are his top priorities. But below him not a single head has rolled even though EBRD bankers sat on the boards of Russian banks that went under. Only in a public institution would they get off so lightly. Brian Caplen reports.