The announcement that Michael Carpenter was to become the sole chairman and chief executive of Salomon Smith Barney should not have come as a total surprise. His previous co-chief executive, Victor Menezes, who came from Citicorp, had kept his head so far below the parapet that I wondered whether he was still with the firm.

Carpenter is very able but, almost as importantly, he is a protégé of Sandy Weill. Today it is Weill's people who run Citigroup. Many of the Citicorp bankers who had been given high positions by former co-chairman John Reed have found their career paths blocked.