How Fischer’s plans fell apart at WestLB

Differing levels of efficiency

Betting on the wrong horse

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

THOMAS FISCHER DID not have the immediate future of his own bank in mind when he began throwing impromptu snippets from The Second Coming into an interview with Euromoney in 2005. But the former CEO of WestLB, as much an aficionado of WB Yeats and Dylan Thomas as of extravagant pinstripe suits and large cigars, could scarcely have chosen a more appropriate way of foretelling his own demise.