The Lord was not smiling on ABN Amro last week. In what the bank described as 'an act of God', its London headquarters was struck by lightning during thunderstorms on Thursday night, causing a complete power failure at 9am on Friday when the bank's backup generators went out.

Unfortunately, although it has a disaster recovery unit based in Docklands, the unit apparently takes some five hours to power up, according to one insider, which meant the bank lost almost a whole day's trading.