“It set the world alight in terms of the involvement of individuals in these deals,” says Gary Dugan, market strategist at JP Morgan, of the pounds 3.4bn BT sale. His handling of the BT offering in 1984 was a watershed for privatisations in Europe. It was the first time shares in a state asset were sold outside the country, and the first time a huge effort was made to sell to individual investors. He will be the first bona fide investment banker at the top of the Bank for a decade.Although he is only 48, it seems like Clementi has been in the City forever. The accountant, whose soft voice and often dishevelled appearance cloak a personality that commands respect when he begins talking, has extensive City connections. The governor is sceptical, but King has, so far, been more favourable.In Clementi, the Bank gets a major City figure with a list of deals behind him which includes the top privatisations of the past 20 years, including British Telecom, British Gas and the regional electricity companies. He is also believed to have fully backed the Bank’s new monetary committee in raising rates both times it has met in the two months since it gained monetary independence.Where George and King do differ, however, is over the single European currency.

“Price stability is a timeless virtue,” said King last October, in a not-so-oblique shot at Clarke. He is also renowned for his bravura performances in the hour-long press conferences after the Bank presents the quarterly inflation report, which he prepares.The 49-year-old economist was right behind George in his two-year battle with former Chancellor Ken Clarke over interest-rate policy. “They got one of each.”
In doing so, the Bank of England keeps a steady hand on the inflation tiller. As chief economist at the Bank since 1991, King is known for his hawkish stance on interest rates. In the end Chancellor Gordon Brown and Bank of England governor Eddie George took on both the outsider and the insider. “It was a classic compromise,” says Prof Doug McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research. FOR David Clementi, the offer to be the next deputy governor of the Bank of England came as a surprise For Mervyn King, it was welcome relief.

Clementi, chief executive of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and the ultimate City merchant banker, was not even on most Bank watchers’ radar as a possible deputy governor, while King – the Bank’s chief economist – had already been passed over twice. “We are not suing for the return of Steve Vale,” said Kroll chief operating officer Mike Cherkasky, “but for breach of agreement and loss of intellectual property.”Somewhat ironically, in view of subsequent developments, the agreement concerned was reached towards the end of last year when protracted negotiations for Kroll’s takeover by the $2bn US information giant Equifax appeared to be stalled and several of the Big Six were reported to be showing interest in buying the company.Kroll is now alleging that Coopers has breached the terms agreed then for it to come in and inspect them.In spite of persistent – and as yet unsubstantiated – rumours that the Equifax deal, announced earlier this year, has been foundering on the rocks of due diligence, Mr Cherkasky said that it had received regulatory approval.. Mr Vale has been accompanied by several former colleagues in Kroll, one of whom, Mary Hertzog, was a managing director at its New York headquarters. “There’s a nice complement of accounting and investigative skills in this,” said Ted Martens, Coopers’ litigation and claims partner in New York, “and I see it developing.”Price Waterhouse has recruited a team of six investigators from Decision Strategies, a New York company specialising in corporate intelligence and itself a Kroll “spin-off’.At Kroll headquarters, the implications are clearly regarded as serious Kroll is suing Coopers in the US.

“On the due diligence front,” he said, “big business will increasingly look for firms which can match their global coverage.” Companies like Kroll, he argued, were too small to do that.Meanwhile, Coopers & Lybrand has head-hunted one of the senior investigators in Kroll’s Los Angeles office, Steve Vale. Ms Codd, a graduate but not a professional accountant, first worked at the Kroll office in Mayfair and, with a partner, subsequently set up a small investigative firm that they sold to Control Risks.
As a consultant at Control Risks, she was responsible for managing the surveillance which, in catching a senior Co-op executive in the act of handing over confidential information, led to the collapse of Andrew Regan’s hostile bid for CWS.At Deloitte Touche, Miss Codd will be responsible to Alan Bray, partner in forensic services, and will concentrate on providing clients with due diligence, assistance in mergers and acquisitions and the management of “corporate crisis”. In London, this will be formalised tomorrow when Emma Codd, the firm’s first “head of business intelligence services” starts work at Deloitte’s. At least two of the “Big Six” accountancy firms – Coopers & Lybrand and Deloitte & Touche – are moving into what one of them calls “business intelligence”, hitherto the preserve of corporate investigation companies such as Kroll Associates and Control Risks. If the shares were worth pounds 20 nine months ago, they must be worth closer to pounds 25 today..

The final patent for Zestril, for instance, does not expire until 2009, and such generic erosion will be more than compensated for by new products.Zeneca has underperformed both its British peers and the US drugs companies. Having spent a day last week in Wilmington, Delaware, with some of the company’s scientists, I have no doubts about the commitment and infrastructure to deliver in the future.Worries about patents expiring are also overdone. The last is Seroquel, a treatment for schizophrenia, which was deemed approvable by the Federal Drugs Administration on Friday Full approval will come in the next few weeks. It will give Zeneca a foothold in an market that is expected to be worth $4bn (pounds 2.5bn) worldwide in the next three years.Unfortunately, some commentators are questioning the strength of the drugs pipeline going forward. The perpetual takeover rumours have proved unfounded and the price is at last beginning to reflect most of the company’s underlying strengths.This week’s interim results will confirm those strengths and will be impressive on a constant currency basis – currency translation will provide something of a drag on reported earnings growth.Since the demerger from ICI in 1993, Zeneca has delivered all the drugs in its pipeline at that time to market. When the review is completed later this month, the way to make this happen will be more apparent.Booster from ZenecaNINE months ago when the Zeneca share price was a little over pounds 17, I argued that the shares were undervalued on fundamentals and should be trading at pounds 20 The market now agrees.