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Striking out for the sectors

Two approaches to expansion

Two decades and billions of dollars ago, Wall Street's most noble credit institution began to reinvent itself as a hybrid investment-cum-wholesale bank. For a while it seemed unstoppable. But this year JP Morgan stumbled - amid rumours of takeover. Parity with those bulge bracket firms still seems so near - and yet so far. Antony Currie reports.

Bill Harrison is not the most orthodox chief executive you will come across in the City. The new boss at BZW speaks with a strong Birmingham accent and refers to telephoning people as "giving them a bell".

Credit Suisse First Boston's acquisition of BZW's equities and corporate advisory divisions at the start of the year was a quite coup for the Swiss bank (and cheap at twice the price the bank paid £100 million). At a stroke, the Swiss bank had suddenly become one of the top equity brokers in the UK, ranking second so far, up from 15th last year.

It's the only private-sector bank to have retained its triple-A rating. What's more, Rabobank is the only foreign bank to have an office in Wagga Wagga. This cooperative, with 467 member banks in the Netherlands, was viewed as a domestic farmers' bank. But for three years that has been changing. First there were moves into insurance and asset management in the Netherlands. Then, for the past year-and-a-half, Rabobank International has been developing as an investment bank. Antony Currie spoke to Henk Visser, member of Rabobank Group's managing board, and Alex von Ungern-Sternberg, head of global investment banking.

Norway gets the urge to merge

Now we have entered the era of globalized markets, the potential for regulators, investors and companies to clash over national classification is huge. Take the case of the merging automobile firms Daimler and Chrysler versus the Standard&Poor's 500 index, which tracks the stock prices of the biggest US corporates.

Two approaches to expansion

Finland's membership of the EU's exchange rate mechanism looks imminent and the country will be well placed to join monetary union. But Finnish banks, just coming out of recession, will need to cut costs and probably merge to keep their heads above water in the new, more competitive environment. John McGrath reports

A new generation of managers has taken over at BZW following David Band's untimely death in March. New chief executive Bill Harrison is a tough, no-nonsense British merchant banker. In his first major interview Harrison explains his view of the bank's future, his player-coach approach and why BZW isn't Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. But, first, we profile the efforts of the other man on the touchline, the smooth American Bob Diamond, and his dramatic first three months as head of the firm's most turbulent division, fixed income. By Steven Irvine

John Meriwether, whose hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) came so spectacularly unstuck last month, is celebrated for an almost bizarre ability to remain calm in the face of huge risk. His quiet, intensely private demeanour has long belied an almost obsessive hunger for ever bigger positions. "If you feel good about the market," he would tell young traders at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, "then get serious."