Whatever happened to the merger between Clearstream and Euroclear? In March this year, Chris Tupker came into the Euroclear chair with all guns blazing, suggesting that he had a window of six months in which to deliver something tangible before his clients' senior management attention moved elsewhere.

Euroclear has certainly delivered - it is merging with the French, Dutch and Belgian depositories - but, as far as an agreement with Clearstream goes, there has been almost no progress. Do those senior managers care?