So the long awaited and much anticipated correction to global markets finally came to pass. Although, if you had been away for an autumn mini-break, you would have missed all the action.

Perhaps the most interesting story of the month was the news that Paul Taubman was selling his recently formed corporate finance firm, PJT Partners, to Blackstone, and that Blackstone would spin off its entire advisory arm in to a standalone entity. Ostensibly this is a good thing as Blackstone, which manages over $200 billion of assets in private equity and real estate, is often accused by advisory clients of having conflicts of interest. The new advisory entity will still be 65% owned by Blackstone, so I’m not convinced this new structure answers the conflict of interest criticism. But perhaps I’m missing something.

It has been a difficult year for big European and American banks. But then come to think of it, none of the years since the demise of Lehman Brothers in 2008 have been easy for them. That makes six full years that banks have been in the doghouse. In the first few following the crisis, they were derided as greedy, evil rogues who had nearly crippled the global economy.

In the past, it has been forced by regulators to raise capital unexpectedly. Nevertheless, as far as I am concerned, Credit Suisse is stuck in the middle of nowhere and has lost a huge amount of momentum since the tumultuous crisis era, when, ironically, it looked like the smart kid on the block. I have lost count of how many senior management re-organizations chief executive Brady Dougan has announced that juggle the same, long-serving employees but don’t seem to move the business forward. In mid-October, yet another Credit Suisse investment banking re-jig crossed the wires. Jim Amine and Tim O’Hara have been promoted to lead the division jointly with Gael de Boissard. They will join the executive board. Eric Varvel, who previously co-headed investment banking with de Boissard, changes his role to chairman of the bank’s Asia Pacific and Middle East regions. Amine, (advisory), O’Hara (equities), and de Boissard (fixed income) will each continue to look after their original areas of focus.

This month, this column is all about investment management. For as long as I can remember, investment bankers and traders have been the rock and roll stars of the financial world.

I was intrigued to see that Blackstone, the leading private equity firm, is disengaging from Russia.

European financial markets were shaken in September by the sudden death of Emilio Botín, the chairman of Banco Santander.

The month of August is supposed to bring peace of mind to busy bankers: the frenetic pace of markets diminishes and the bosses depart for their villas in Tuscany or mansions in the Hamptons.

For those of you who were dozing on the beach this summer, with your smart-phones switched off, a leading Portuguese bank was restructured in August and no one, least of all the regulators, seems to have forewarned us of this impending disaster.

As regular readers might remember, I have long been worried about the inflationary impact of the extraordinary zero interest-rate policy which central banks have foisted on us.

A hedge fund manager came to see me recently and we talked about the state of the market. As US equity indices hover near all-time highs, cynicism prevails.

UBS was named Euromoney’s best global bank for 2014 at the awards dinner, held at London’s Natural History Museum. Having attended nine such dinners in my role as a columnist for Euromoney, I was struck by how restrained the atmosphere in the room was.

L’Roubi may be a chameleon when it comes to his sartorial mores but Bank of England governor, Mark Carney resembles a chameleon when it comes to his views on UK interest rates.

Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, has firmly rebuffed the bears and those who believed in him made a fortune with timely purchases of periphery European bonds and stock markets.

Jenkins is at a dead-end. This is what happens when you have no strategy and just muddle through instead of taking the necessary and painful decisions.

Shades of Gwyneth and Chris: Simon Robey and Simon Warshaw consciously uncoupled from Simon Robertson.

There is a whiff of hysteria haunting markets. Many of the big players have found themselves wrong-footed. The sands are shifting, and it’s difficult to know who or what to trust.

In April, it was also announced that Barclays would scale back its commodity trading operation. I have written about Barclays’ chief executive, Antony Jenkins, in recent columns and how the supposed new broom is lurching from one pitfall to the next.

Another banker whose surname begins with “M” hit the headlines in April. Blythe Masters, the veteran JPMorgan banker, left the US firm.

Some have dubbed Antony Jenkins' reign at Barclays a work in transition. To me, it is undoubtedly a mess in transition.

By coincidence, also in February, Euromoney hosted its annual awards dinner for the private banking industry and Tom Kalaris, Barclays’ former head of wealth management, sat at the top table. Kalaris resigned from Barclays last June. I have always liked Tom and will watch with interest how his career progresses. The compere for the dinner was Alastair Campbell, director of communications from 1997 to 2003 for prime minister Tony Blair. Campbell offered one key nugget of advice to the group of assembled financiers: "In order to win the public relations battle, you have to convince public opinion that banks and bankers provide a real service that individuals and the economy need." Obviously, Campbell is correct, but is anyone listening in the banks’ luxurious executive suites?

I hear that an article published recently by Reuters is causing waves at Morgan Stanley. The thrust of the piece – entitled ‘Wall Street’s most eligible banker Fleming waits for a suitor’ – is that 50-year-old Greg Fleming, the head of Morgan Stanley’s wealth and investment management business, might succeed James Gorman as chief executive. According to the piece, Fleming is also a flight risk as he possesses the talents to be chief executive of another financial firm.

The question I would want to know, were I a Euromoney reader, is: what is really going on out there? Is the world healing? Has it healed? Or indeed, has the world healed so completely that we are now about to suffer another bout of illness?

The financial landscape is changing and certain macro themes are beginning to emerge.

Against this confusing backdrop, life goes on. A friend who is a senior banker in Asia reports that during a brief visit to London he arranged to meet one of his best clients, an Indian tycoon, at Claridge’s Hotel for tea. Suddenly, the wife of the tycoon jumped up and started embracing what appeared to be an elderly gentleman. "How are you?" she exclaimed. "What are you doing now? We’ve missed you."

Given I am writing this column in December just before the magazine closes for Christmas – I have been pondering what presents I would give certain bank chief executives.

Anyway, back to Switzerland and the Swiss banks. Things do appear to be stabilizing at UBS. Sergio Ermotti was appointed chief executive in late 2011 and a year later he installed the long-term Merrill Lynch banker Andrea Orcel as head of UBS’s investment bank. UBS underwent an epiphany and scaled its fixed-income division back drastically. The new focus was to be wealth management and corporate finance, which would hopefully flourish untainted by scandals in the fixed-income division. However, in the third quarter of 2013, UBS suffered a setback. The bank announced that it would delay, by at least a year, its aim to reach a 15% group return-on-equity target. This retreat was due to an unexpected demand from the Swiss regulator, Finma, requiring UBS to set aside more capital against "known and unknown litigation".

It was a dank, dark autumn morning. My alarm shrilled and I stumbled into the kitchen to brew a pitch-black espresso. On auto-pilot, I reached over and switched on CNBC. Someone was lamenting the most recent "disappointing" set of Credit Suisse earnings. "Same old, same old," I thought to myself as I grumpily switched off the television.

I was interested that the renowned banker James Leigh-Pemberton, who used to head Credit Suisse’s UK operations, left the bank late last year to become chairman designate of UK Financial Investments, the British government unit that manages the taxpayer shareholdings in Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Someone else who also recently stepped down is Sir Hector Sants, the former head of compliance at Barclays. Sants, a one-time Credit Suisse banker, ran the wholesale division of the British regulatory authority, the Financial Services Authority, from 2004 to 2007. He was then promoted to run the whole organization, which he did until the FSA was dismantled in the middle of 2012.

Just in case you thought that Abigail with attitude dinners are occasions for hot air and posturing, I would remind you of the deal, finalized this November, in which Aberdeen Asset Management purchased Scottish Widows from Lloyds Banking Group. Well, the chief executives of Lloyds and Aberdeen – António Horta-Osório and Martin Gilbert – first met at a Euromoney dinner two years ago.

I am a worried woman. I am starting to see bubbles everywhere, and it’s not easy to work out how to protect oneself. I am not alone. In mid-November, the cover of the respected Barron’s financial magazine had one word emblazoned on it: “Bubble?”

One banker – although I use the term loosely – who might be wishing his mother could get him out of trouble is the Reverend Paul Flowers. This story has me spellbound. It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Flowers, who is now known by the sobriquet of the ‘Crystal Methodist’, was the chairman of Co-op bank which is owned by the Co-op Group, a mutual institution. Mutual institutions are owned by their depositors or policyholders and are not publicly listed on the UK stock exchange. I have to admit that until now the Abigail with attitude column has not focused its piercing gaze on the Co-op. This was a big mistake. The bank has been revealed as a cesspit of scandal and impropriety and it could well drag some big establishment figures down with it.

Autumn is a wistful season: the balmy summer days redolent of hope are behind us. We wince at the prospect of grey winter and another year drawing to its close. The autumn is often a tricky and tumultuous period for markets. Some of us still remember the 1987 equity market crash. This occurred on October 19 when the Dow lost over 500 points and 22% of its value evaporated.

And talking of Goldman, I have to admit to being surprised at how mediocre its third-quarter earnings were. In mid-October, the firm announced that revenue in fixed income, currency and commodities fell some 45% to $1.25 billion. This was a bigger drop than that experienced by rival flow houses. Goldman’s third-quarter net income was actually flat at $1.4 billion because the firm cut remuneration costs. Revenues fell to $6.7 billion from $8.4 billion a year earlier.

October also saw a changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. By which I mean, after more than 30 years, Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, left the Bank for a teaching post at Harvard. Tucker, who was widely viewed as the likely successor to the dour Lord King, lost out to Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.

As September draws to a close, I am starting to wonder if I am living in a parallel universe. Ben Bernanke seems to have gone barmy. And I wouldn’t blame him. Saving the financial world from itself has been a Herculean task.

And talking of Lehman’s bankruptcy, I was intrigued to read an opinion editorial in the Financial Times written by Bob Diamond, the former chief executive of Barclays Bank. Bob of course pounced on the corpse of Lehman Brothers as it was drowning and made off with a succulent limb: the US broker-dealer operations.

Is Bank of America on an upward trajectory? Am I the only person to notice that Bank of America’s economists were a lone voice insisting that the Federal Reserve would not taper in September? Nice call BAML!

It has been an oddly eerie summer. Everybody seems to have fled to the beach, leaving a few journalists to eke out the occasional interesting story.

Policymakers continue to lavish liquidity on the western world. It will be a long time before short-term money-market rates normalize in the US, the UK, Germany or Australia.

Much has changed since I used to work in the City. It is out with the autocratic, eccentric banking demigod (think Dick Fuld or Ken Lewis) and in with the omnipotent regulator. It is out with brash, macho money-making and in with a more cuddly approach to deal-doing. Think of the industry’s greatest survivor, Lloyd Blankfein, his sprouting of facial hair and passionate advocacy of gay rights. See my April 2013 column for more on Loveable Lloyd’s transformation.

Bob Wigley, a former chairman of Merrill Lynch EMEA, might also appreciate a large tumbler of Scotch. Wigley, who left the US investment bank after it was devoured by Bank of America in 2009, became chairman of Hibu, the former Yellow Pages printed directory of local businesses, some four years ago.

Ackermann has experienced the chill of unwelcome publicity in recent days but how, I wonder, does Jamie Dimon feel when every day seems to bring another cloud, if not a hailstorm? I have written recently about how Jamie’s halo has become tarnished.

The 2013 Euromoney Awards for excellence dinner, held in early July, was a glittering affair. Finally, it seems, the tide might have turned in the financial industry. The room was thronged and financiers had travelled from Africa, Albania and even supposedly impoverished Greece to attend the event. The guest speaker was the former UK Member of Parliament Gyles Brandreth, who was both entertaining and enthusiastic. Guests raised over £780,000 ($1.2 million) for the nominated charity, Action against Cancer, which is researching a new treatment for the disease.

I’m not sure if the words ‘good corporate governance’ exist in the Russian language. But I was slightly bemused to read that John Mack, the former CEO of Morgan Stanley, had been appointed, in June, to the board of Rosneft, the Russian oil and gas company. The state owns some 70% of Rosneft. This strikes me as an odd job for a former red-blooded baron of Wall Street capitalism. Meanwhile Mack was also named to the board of Glencore Xstrata in June.

There are some macro events in the next few years that will influence how the British economy goes and how British banking shares perform. The two most important for me are the fate of the Conservative-led coalition government at the May 2015 elections and whether or not the UK remains in the European Union. If the Conservatives stay in power and the UK stays in the EU, things should be fine. If either of these things does not happen, I would expect British banking shares to suffer. The UK chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, might well experience a warm glow when he contemplates his investment in Lloyds Banking Group, but I have no doubt he scowls as he ponders the quagmire that RBS represents. The UK taxpayer has an 80% stake in RBS and there is no clear exit strategy in sight. Indeed, since the chief executive, Stephen Hester, was unceremoniously elbowed aside last month, the bank has resembled a rudderless wreck, listing from side to side. "Amateur central," a source sniffed. "Sacking the chief executive when you have no clear successor in place is pure folly."

I am pleased to relate that finally JPMorgan is moving towards some semblance of seemly corporate governance. Perhaps senior management have been reading the Abigail with attitude column. I have been criticizing the makeup of the bank’s board since July 2009 when I wrote: ‘I find the JPMorgan board intriguing in that, although the members are impressive in their respective fields, few have in-depth financial expertise. JPMorgan is doing well today, but should it stumble the board will be scrutinized.’ I renewed my call for better corporate governance in May this year when certain investors were agitating for Jamie Dimon to split his chief executive and chairman roles. I correctly predicted that the rebellion would blow over: ‘My bet is that Dimon stays and investors back down.’ However, I did suggest that some long-standing directors with little direct financial experience – such as Ellen Futter – should go.

Are we experiencing a bout of the summer doldrums? The high-adrenaline events of previous years have dwindled to an unsatisfactory dribble.

Edward Gibbon wrote about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and, for a few years now, I have been thinking about whether London can continue its dominance as an important financial centre. I am starting to think that we might be witnessing the decline and fall of the London empire. In a way, London is a city-state which bears little resemblance to the rest of the country. The European Banking Authority has become a Rottweiler and is insisting that, from next year, any banker who earns more than €500,000 will be affected by a EU-wide bonus cap. Such employees will have variable pay restricted to the same level as salary, or twice that level with explicit shareholder approval.

In late June, I attended the International Capital Market Association’s dinner at the Savoy Hotel in London to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Eurobond market. In 1963, the first fixed-rate Eurobond was launched by Autostrade. The issue was $15 million of 5.5% guaranteed bonds due 1972/78. Icma had gathered together an impressive group of market participants from all over the world. Issuers and bankers mingled and reminisced. Euromoney, which was founded in 1969 and has chronicled the development of and the milestones in the Eurobond market, was a sponsor of the dinner. As I scanned the guest list, I saw many familiar names: Cyrus Ardalan, Samir Assaf, Johannes Attems, Allegra Berman, Charlie Berman, Viscount Bridport, Waltraut Burghardt, Lachlan Burn, Maria Cannata, Christopher Carter, David Clark, Nicholas Clegg, Joe Cook, Frank Czichowski. And that brings me to only the fourth letter of the alphabet.

According to Reuters, Crispin Odey, a respected hedge fund manager, took a 5% stake in Man Group last October and increased this further in April when the share price was around 100p, some 20% higher than the current price. Odey is a very astute investor and is admired for buying Barclays’ shares at their post-crunch low in the spring of 2009.

I am sure Jamie Dimon considers the hoo-ha about splitting the chief executive and chairman roles at JPMorgan to be an over-reaction.

Returning to the category of imperial CEOs, most would agree that Bob Diamond, the former Barclays chief, was an earlier poster boy: a Do-it-my-way-or-take-the-highway kind of boss.

A seasoned source told me a few months ago that Diamond’s tenure was abruptly terminated because "He was foreign! In this new era of heightened public scrutiny and domineering regulators," the source sighed, "your cultural values and background have to be aligned with those of the national authorities. If your face doesn’t fit and there’s a setback, you are out. It happened to Bob and it happened to Vikram Pandit at Citi. Anshu Jain, over at Deutsche, needs to watch out."

After my March column had been published, I suffered a pang of writer’s remorse. Had I been too harsh when I criticized the “crony capitalist culture” at Barclays’ investment bank and accused group chief executive Antony Jenkins of hypocrisy?

The European Union’s decision to cap bankers’ bonuses is deeply troubling. Normally, I admonish bankers for making off with too much of shareholders’ money. However, this cap might have serious implications for the way in which European financial institutions compete, as well as the role of London as a main financial centre.

One institution that probably wouldn’t even make the fall-back list for our hypothetical graduate is Nomura. I have written at length about the missteps at the Japanese firm. However, even I was taken aback to read that Italian prosecutors tried to seize some €1.8 billion of assets from Nomura as part of a probe into Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s use of derivatives to hide losses.

Most of us carry scars from the excesses of the debt-fuelled casino days. The acceleration, crash and burn of the 2005-09 period led to lost jobs, dwindling pension pots and puny returns on cash savings. But for some the great financial recession has cast few shadows.

Increasingly however, bankers want to be seen as human beings and not as money machines. I was amused that even Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, is keen to portray a cuddlier image. In March, Blankfein appeared on CBS’s evening news programme espousing the cause of gay marriage.