Descriptions can often be misleading. Recently I saw Standard Chartered Bank defined as an investment bank – and this in a quality national newspaper based in London. What constitutes an investment bank anyway?

Twenty years ago Paul Ferris wrote Gentlemen of Fortune: the World's Merchant and Investment Bankers in which he described investment banking as "capitalism boiled down to its essentials". He wrote: "The trade has a touch of violence. It is a kind of exhilarating plunder."