According to analysts who attended the briefing, he said the top management takes a look every quarter atevery merger proposition and had recently gone through the process again.Over the past few days, the Internet chat rooms, where staff of both banks swap gossip, have been abuzz with stories, the most intriguing of which talks of proposals for merging Merrill’s and Chase’s investment banking operations, which would be spun out of the core retail and commercial bank.The guys at Chase, for their part, feel that Merrill is not the only game in town. “I feel strongly that we are not paid as a management team, we’re paid to create value,” he said to analysts last Friday. Merrill also sustained another hit the other week when Tom Gahan, head of its lucrative leverage finance business, quit to join rival Deutsche Bank.Mr Komansky’s denials have been ambiguous, to say the least. Talk in the bond markets is that while Goldman’s and Deutsche’s fixed income desks have been coining it in during the first quarter, Merrill has been left behind.Such talk is dismissed by Michael Marks, the former head of Smith New Court and now head of Merrill’s European operations, who says that the firm “is delighted by its performance” in the first quarter.Rivals say, nevertheless, that while Morgan Stanley and Goldman have also raked it in on the merger and acquisition front over the past few months, Merrill has been lagging behind.

The rumour mill has it that Merrill needs to do something to recover momentum after last autumn’s mauling. “They were incredibly arrogant,” complains one investment banker who knew that situation well.Investment bankers reckon that Chase may have got the sense that it is now time for Merrill to eat some humble pie. The debacle not only cost the firm dear – last autumn it declared its first loss-making quarter this decade – but Merrill’s senior executives, it emerged, had ploughed some of their own pensions money into LTCM.Sources say that Merrill at the time said OK – provided itcould run Chase’s entire wholesale corporate banking business Not surprisingly Chase’s response was a polite no. Insiders say that Chase went to Merrill last summer before the bail-out of the now infamous hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.

One said: “These guys are consummate poker players.”It is no secret on Wall Street that Chase, which at one time has been linked with practically every investment bank on the Street, not to mention a couple of the Europeans too, is still thirsting for a deal. But the more sophisticated Wall Street insiders reckon that may not be the end of the story. Talk of a deal in the offing between Chase Manhattan and Merrill Lynch was given fresh impetus last week by advance publicity for an article from Forbes, the American business magazine, only to be killed off by none other than David Komansky, the chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, who told a regular pre-results briefing of Wall Street stock analysts on Friday that the firm regularly examines merger proposals and has not seen anything recently that “creates value.”
Most read that as a straightforward denial. IF THERE is one thing Wall Street investment bankers love to talk about it is deals. These days they seem to be spending almost as much time talking about mergers between themselves as they are about those between clients. “Everyone is talking to everyone,” said one investment banker yesterday.

Last August Hermes won pounds 300m of business from the Sainsbury fund. Geof Pearson, pensions manager at J Sainsbury Pension Fund, said: “We appointed Hermes Liberty last year on the basis that they offer a tracking accuracy that is second to none, together with a fixed fee, which we believe is the most appropriate way of charging for a passive portfolio.”. nff sells to both the large retail chains and to corner shops.. J SAINSBURY Pension Fund has switched another pounds 300m of its assets from Mercury Asset Management (MAM) to the tracking fund manager Hermes Liberty Investment Management, doubling the amount it has with Hermes. The Evans Group and Hafren Wholesale were sold by administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers to nff for pounds 2,105,000.
The businesses are based in Aberystwyth and Haverfordwest and make speciality breads, including Ciabatta Herb Sundried Tomato and Cheese Bread, as well as more traditional products, such as doughnouts.Henry Roberts, chief executive of nff (pictured), said the two businesses had been overcapitalised but were fundamentally sound They had a turnover of pounds 8.4m last year.

ONE OF the country’s leading suppliers of cakes and confectionery to the retail trade, nff plc (formerly Northumberland Fine Foods), has bought a Wales-based baking and distribution business which went into administration before Christmas. More than 70 per cent are not willing to pay more than pounds 500.. According to a new survey produced by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), in association with Marketing magazine, 45 per cent of those businesses polled believe that it is the British identity that helps position British businesses as competitive and strong.
However, 44 per cent of those who do think that a corporate brand would benefit Britain are unwilling to pay a business levy to promote the UK as a business location. OVER HALF of UK businesses believe a “corporate style” brand is needed for Britain to gain the recognition it deserves for innovation and to increase its competitive edge. The environment has been one of low and falling prices of imported goods, fed by weak commodity markets.If oil prices start to rise while pressure on employers to raise wages also steps up, it may be that the formula that has paid such dividends for the past eight years starts to lose some of its magic.. Most goods markets in the US are just too competitive at the moment for anyone to risk pricing themselves out.The US and its policymakers have done much to sustain the boom, but they have had plenty of assistance from abroad.