Abigail with attitude: Point/counterpoint, Ondra success
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Opinion

Abigail with attitude: Point/counterpoint, Ondra success

April 2013 marks my seventh anniversary with Euromoney. During that time, I have watched, sometimes awe-struck, sometimes gobsmacked, developments in the financial markets. I have written about big banks, hedge funds, asset managers and the twists and turns of politics at these institutions.


Helped by my two decades as an investment banker, and thus a quasi-insider, I have tried to shine a torch on a few crevices where journalists don’t normally poke around. I have made many friends and a few enemies. I have had some good calls: I warned about the weak Lehman’s board before anyone else connected the dots (2006), I wrote that Nomura’s purchaseof Lehman’s European and Asian operations would not work (2009, 2010 and 2011).

I consistently worried about Barclays and whether or not Bob Diamond might be Icarus reborn. I expressed doubts that James Gorman would find it easy to turn the fortunes of Morgan Stanley around and I was convinced that Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis’s acquisition of Countrywide would be a mistake and that he had paid too much for Merrill Lynch when he bought it, during the crazy, hazy days of September 2008.

I was also one of the few journalists to say that JPMorgan was not as wonderful as the world believed, and that Jamie Dimon should not be both chairman and chief executive of the bank.


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