In the past 18 months, I have felt rather sorry for employees of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), where I have friends at all levels. The investment bank has been used as a pawn in a much wider game being played between Allianz and Dresdner Bank, which Allianz bought in 2001. While Allianz may have had good reason to regret its acquisition of Dresdner, both sides seemed to vent their wrath on DrKW, which, on many occasions, looked as if it was being used as a practice football.

Why pick on DrKW? Was it because Allianz had more than a fair share of problems in its insurance businesses and that Dresdner was showing substantial losses due to write-downs in its loan book? Certainly Allianz must have been fed up to the teeth with analysts writing that it should never have bought Dresdner in the first place, and why not dump it as soon as possible. As for DrKW, what did Allianz need with a loss-making investment bank that was not an integral part of its business strategy?