Dressing up for a sale?
"It was driven by the changing demands of the business," says Alasdair Morrison, taipan of Jardine Matheson. "Globalization has been picking up in recent years." "All of the business activities have become global in nature," says Tim Freshwater, deputy chairman of Jardine Fleming. "Clients require a global service," says John Manser, chairman of Robert Fleming.
In case you haven't guessed, the agenda was globalization. The decision to merge Jardine Fleming into UK-based investment bank Robert Fleming is being portrayed as part of the inevitable process of globalization in investment banking. The logic of this is hard to dispute.
However, for those who have been watching Jardine Fleming in recent years it is clear that there was another agenda and it was one man's: John Manser's. As soon as Manser became boss of Robert Fleming in 1990 the independence of the Hong Kong-based investment bank was...
