Martin Blessing, chairman of the board of managing directors of Commerzbank, had his work cut out last Wednesday at 30 Gresham Street, the shiny, two-year-old London headquarters of Dresdner Kleinwort. The mood was bleak, with one trader describing it as “one step up from his grandfather’s funeral”.

But news of Commerzbank’s takeover of Dresdner Bank, which will result in the loss of about 1,000 jobs from Dresdner Kleinwort and Commerzbank’s London-based investment banking businesses, only represented a bow to the inevitable.