The real driving force in the battle for ABN

Most of the young men working on ‘hedge fund alley’, the narrow streets leading away from Berkeley Square in Mayfair, have expensive but unsinister ambitions. They’d like a new Aston Martin DB7, preferably convertible. They’d like a swanky new penthouse overlooking the Thames, plus a girlfriend who might have stepped out of the pages of Vogue. They certainly aren’t setting out to re-draw the industrial map of Europe; but the law of unintended consequences applies as much to business as to any other field of human endeavour, and that is what they appear to be doing.

Over the last few weeks, the City and the business press have been held in thrall by the battle for control of the Dutch bank ABN Amro. Barclays has already tabled a E64 billion offer, to which the Dutch have reluctantly agreed. The combined group would have a value of around $160 billion, making it the sixth largest bank in the world.