What do you get when you cross a carthorse with a carthorse? The answer is probably another carthorse, perhaps even a prized shire horse. That was my first impression of the merger between Chase Manhattan Bank and JP Morgan when the news broke on September 14, 2000.

However, I wasn't totally surprised. Chase Manhattan, headed by William Harrison, was big and brash with lots of cash, but was a social outcast on Wall Street and in the City of London. 'You went to James 'Jimmy' Lee's team at Chase when you wanted to finance a big transaction. You never went to them for strategic advice,' said the chief financial officer of a top Fortune 500 corporation.