Diversity may be alive and well in the financial services industry in spite of its reputation to the contrary. Fortune magazine's ranking of the US's 50 most powerful black executives has put investment bankers in four of the top 10 positions.

Stan O'Neal, president of Merrill Lynch, Thomas Jones, chief executive of global investments, private banking and asset management at Citigroup, Adebayo Ogunlesi, head of investment banking at CSFB, and Vernon Jordan, senior managing director of Lazard LLC, are identified as some of the US's most powerful black people.