Europe’s newly emerging mass affluent are the latest target – and the latest obsession – for financial services operators. However many players have yet to unveil either a clear strategy or the right products. Indeed some big names have already decided to cut their considerable losses and leave the market behind, convinced they won’t be able to make it pay. But whoever comes up with the winning formula is likely to enjoy a bonanza.

In the back parlours of the financial markets, where credit derivatives meet securitization, bankers are slicing and dicing credit to create a grand smorgasbord of investment products. The names of these delicacies are confusing, the recipes are closely guarded secrets and each firm has its own unique house style. But for firms and bankers with the requisite know-how, there is plenty of money to be made. The top credit structurers – bankers with a background in quant, an understanding of credit and a flair for complex legal contracts – can name their price.

When Julian Simmonds, global head of foreign exchange and structured products businesses at Citigroup, announced his decision to retire this May, it sent shockwaves through the bank. Senior executives are thought to be trying to talk Simmonds, who joined Citibank in 1972 and achieved prominence by building its forex business into the undisputed market leader in the 1980s and 1990s, into hanging round a little longer. "No one event has prompted my decision," Simmonds tells Euromoney. "But 29 years is a long, long time in a high pressure position. I have outside interests, as has my wife and I'd like to participate in those with her."

Mergers drive many of the changes in the annual rankings of banks by shareholders’ equity. American and Japanese groups retain the top spots. But European banks have the market capitalizations to grow further through acquisition. By Andrew Newby, data from Moody’s.