I suggested last week that Leonhard Fischer, the young Dresdner Vorstand dynamo, wouldn't throw in the Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (DrKB) bond towel in London and let the whole operation float out to sea. Fischer is, after all, a natural fighter. As the youngest-ever elected member of a main German bank Vorstand, he has everything to prove and very little to lose.

The doomed merger between Deutsche Bank and Dresdner left many scars on Dresdner. However, readers should remember that Fischer and Bernd Farholz were the only two Dresdner executives who would have been included on a combined Deutsche-Dresdner main board of directors. At no time were they second choices.