These are hard times for Deutsehe Bank, despite its huge strides in investment banking. Next week its chief executive, Josef Ackerman, goes on trial in Dusseldorf. Careless words by Rolf Breuer, the head of its supervisory board, led to another court ruling last month that may cost Germany’ s biggest bank several hundred million euros in damages. Then there is Parmalat. Although no evidence has emerged of complicity in the Italian dairy group’ s fraud, Deutsche’ s name has become entwined in the affair.
In many other respects, however, Deutsche’ s reputation has never been higher. In dubbing it " Bank of the Year 2003", International Financing Review, the capital markets’ favorite newssheet, purred that Deutsche was a "lean, aggressive, focused universal bank" In the league tables that investment banks watch so keenly, Deutsche excelled last year as lead manager of bonds and convertible bonds and of some racier products, such as repackaged debt securities and high-yield "junk" bonds. In other disciplines it rarely fell below the top ten in the world.
However, it is still nowhere near the top in equity offerings and advice on mergers and acquisitions, except in Germany. It still has a problem with costs,which were a fat 82% of income in the third quarter of 2003, thanks mainly to the thick pay packets of its investment bankers and its poor returns from corporate and retail banking.
Mr. Ackermann must try to improve the weak spots while spending two clays a week, probably until June, in a courtroom. He and four others face charges of "breach of trust" over the way bonuses were awarded to board meinbers of Mannesmann, a telecoms company. Mr. Aekermann sat on Mannesmann’ s supervisory board. There is no suggestion that he gained personally. Nor was there any harmful intent in Mr. Breuer’ s remarks in a television interview about the financial health of the Kirch media group shortly before its bankruptcy. But he was careless, and a Munich court found Deutsche (but not Mr. Breuer) liable for damages, to be set in due course, without right of appeal. The bank said this week it has lodged a protest with the federal supreme court in Karlsruhe. Meanwhile, Kirch has filed a suit against Deutsche in America.
Deutsche’s involvement with Parmalat also looks sloppy. It led a 350m bond issue fur the group in September. It was also a leading borrower and lender of Parma[at shares, so that in November it technically held the voting rights to over 5% of Parmalat stock. That stake had fallen to 1.5% by December 19th, the day the dairy company’s black hole became public. It reported this, perhaps over-zealously, to the Italian authorities. That may have given the wrong impression, say, sources close to the bank, because the transactions were for third parties.
This is awkward for a bank that managed to avoid most serious attacks on conflicts of interest thai beset the investment-banking industry following the collapse of Enron in 2001 and the bursting of the tech-stock bubble. Mr. Ackermann will need a clear head to steer the bank through the coming storms.
It can be inferred from the text that______.
A:the chief executive of Deutsche will be found guilty by court B:it is yet to be found whether Deutsche is involved ira the fraud C:Deutsche’ s reputation has been ruined by its present problems D:the head of Deutsche’ s supervisory board is a shrewd banker
______ during the war, the airport has never been used again.
A:Has damaged B:Having damaged C:Has been damaged D:Having been damaged
Memory Class Stan Field knows what age can do to a person’’s memory, and he’’s not taking any chances with his. He chooses his food carefully and gets plenty of exercise. He also avoids stress, coca cola and cigarette smoke. What’’s more, at breakfast each morning, the 69-year-old chemical engineer swallows a plateful of pills in the hope of boosting his brain power. Michelle Amove is less than half Field’’s age, but no less concerned about her memory. While working round the clock to finish a degree in film studies, the 33-year-old New Yorker had the alarming sensation that she had stopped retaining anything. "I couldn’’t even remember names," she says. "I thought, Oh, no, I’’m over 30. It’’s all downhill from here. " Besides loading up on supplements, Amove signed up for a memory enhancing course at New York’’s Mount Siani Medical Center. And when she got there, she found herself surrounded by people who were just as worried as she was. For millions of Americans, and especially for baby boomers (生育高峰出生的人) , the demands of the Information Age conflict with a sense of declining physical power. "When boomers were in their 30s and 40s, they launched the fitness boom," says Cynthia Green, the psychologist who teaches Mount Sinai’’s memory class. "Now we have the mental-fitness boom Memory is the boomers’’ new life-crisis issue." And of course a major marketing opportunity. The demand for books and seminars has never been greater, says Jack Lannom, a longtime memory trainer whose weekly TV show, " Mind Unlimited," goes out to 33 million homes on the Christian Network. Anxious consumers are rushing to buy do-it-yourself programs and supplement makers are trying to sell everything but sawdust (木屑) as a brain booster. But before you get out your checkbook, a few questions are in order. Does everyday forgetfulness signal declining brain function? Is "megamemory" (超级记忆) a realistic goal for normal people? And if you could have a perfect memory, would you really want it? Until recently, no one could address those issues with much authority, but our knowledge of memory is exploding. New techniques are revealing how different parts of the brain interact to preserve meaningful experiences. Biologists are trying to understand the underlying (潜在的) chemical processes and neuroscientists (神经系统科学家) are discovering how age, stress and other factors can disrupt them. No one is close to finding the secret to perfect recall, but as you’’ll see, that may be just as well. According to the writer, the secret to perfect memory______.
A:is not in sight yet B:will never be found C:was found a long time ago D:has been found
Memory Class Stan Field knows what age can do to a person’’s memory, and he’’s not taking any chances with his. He chooses his food carefully and gets plenty of exercise. He also avoids stress, coca cola and cigarette smoke. What’’s more, at breakfast each morning, the 69-year-old chemical engineer swallows a plateful of pills in the hope of boosting his brain power. Michelle Amove is less than half Field’’s age, but no less concerned about her memory. While working round the clock to finish a degree in film studies, the 33-year-old New Yorker had the alarming sensation that she had stopped retaining anything. "I couldn’’t even remember names," she says. "I thought, Oh, no, I’’m over 30. It’’s all downhill from here. " Besides loading up on supplements, Amove signed up for a memory enhancing course at New York’’s Mount Siani Medical Center. And when she got there, she found herself surrounded by people who were just as worried as she was. For millions of Americans, and especially for baby boomers (生育高峰出生的人) , the demands of the Information Age conflict with a sense of declining physical power. "When boomers were in their 30s and 40s, they launched the fitness boom," says Cynthia Green, the psychologist who teaches Mount Sinai’’s memory class. "Now we have the mental-fitness boom Memory is the boomers’’ new life-crisis issue." And of course a major marketing opportunity. The demand for books and seminars has never been greater, says Jack Lannom, a longtime memory trainer whose weekly TV show, " Mind Unlimited," goes out to 33 million homes on the Christian Network. Anxious consumers are rushing to buy do-it-yourself programs and supplement makers are trying to sell everything but sawdust (木屑) as a brain booster. But before you get out your checkbook, a few questions are in order. Does everyday forgetfulness signal declining brain function? Is "megamemory" (超级记忆) a realistic goal for normal people? And if you could have a perfect memory, would you really want it? Until recently, no one could address those issues with much authority, but our knowledge of memory is exploding. New techniques are revealing how different parts of the brain interact to preserve meaningful experiences. Biologists are trying to understand the underlying (潜在的) chemical processes and neuroscientists (神经系统科学家) are discovering how age, stress and other factors can disrupt them. No one is close to finding the secret to perfect recall, but as you’’ll see, that may be just as well. According to the writer, the secret to perfect memory______.
A:is not in sight yet B:will never be found C:was found a long time ago D:has been found
Memory Class Stan Field knows what age can do to a person’’s memory, and he’’s not taking any chances with his. He chooses his food carefully and gets plenty of exercise. He also avoids stress, coca cola and cigarette smoke. What’’s more, at breakfast each morning, the 69-year-old chemical engineer swallows a plateful of pills in the hope of boosting his brain power. Michelle Amove is less than half Field’’s age, but no less concerned about her memory. While working round the clock to finish a degree in film studies, the 33-year-old New Yorker had the alarming sensation that she had stopped retaining anything. "I couldn’’t even remember names," she says. "I thought, Oh, no, I’’m over 30. It’’s all downhill from here. " Besides loading up on supplements, Amove signed up for a memory enhancing course at New York’’s Mount Siani Medical Center. And when she got there, she found herself surrounded by people who were just as worried as she was. For millions of Americans, and especially for baby boomers (生育高峰出生的人) , the demands of the Information Age conflict with a sense of declining physical power. "When boomers were in their 30s and 40s, they launched the fitness boom," says Cynthia Green, the psychologist who teaches Mount Sinai’’s memory class. "Now we have the mental-fitness boom Memory is the boomers’’ new life-crisis issue." And of course a major marketing opportunity. The demand for books and seminars has never been greater, says Jack Lannom, a longtime memory trainer whose weekly TV show, " Mind Unlimited," goes out to 33 million homes on the Christian Network. Anxious consumers are rushing to buy do-it-yourself programs and supplement makers are trying to sell everything but sawdust (木屑) as a brain booster. But before you get out your checkbook, a few questions are in order. Does everyday forgetfulness signal declining brain function? Is "megamemory" (超级记忆) a realistic goal for normal people? And if you could have a perfect memory, would you really want it? Until recently, no one could address those issues with much authority, but our knowledge of memory is exploding. New techniques are revealing how different parts of the brain interact to preserve meaningful experiences. Biologists are trying to understand the underlying (潜在的) chemical processes and neuroscientists (神经系统科学家) are discovering how age, stress and other factors can disrupt them. No one is close to finding the secret to perfect recall, but as you’’ll see, that may be just as well. According to the writer, the secret to perfect memory______.
A:is not in sight yet B:will never be found C:was found a long time ago D:has been found
第二篇"Lucky" Lord Lucan —Alive or Dead On 8th November 1974 Lord Lucan, a British aristocrat, vanished. The day before, his children’s nanny had been brutally murdered and his wife had been attacked too. To this day the British public are still interested in the murder case because Lucan has never been found. Now, over 30 years later, the police have reopened the case, hoping that new DNA techniques will help solve this murder mystery. People suspected that "Lucky", as he was called by friends, wanted to kill his wife he no longer lived with. They say that Lucan entered his old house and in the dark, killed the nanny by mistake. His estranged wife heard noises, came downstairs and was also attacked, but managed to escape. Seven months after the murder, a jury concluded that Lucan had killed the nanny. What happened next is unclear, but there are several theories which fall into one of three categories: he may have killed himself, he could have escaped or he might have been killed. It appears that the night after the murder, "Lucky" borrowed a car and drove it, Lucan’s friend Aspinall said in an interview that he thought Lucan had committed suicide by sinking his boat in the English Channel. Another version of events says that "Lucky" left the blood-soaked car on the coast and took a ferry to France. He was met there by someone who drove him to safety in another country. However, after a time, his rescuers became worried that they would become involved in the murder too and so Lucan was killed. A further fascinating theory was made in the book Dead Lucky by Duncan MacLaughlin, a former detective. He believes that Lucan travelled to Goa, India, where he assumed the identity of a Mr Barry Haplin. Lucan then lived in Goa till his death in 1996. In the end the claim turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The man who died in 1996 was really Haplin, an ex-schoolteacher turned hippy. So what is the truth about "Lucky"? DNA testing has solved many murder cases, but who knows if it can close the book on this one.British public are still interested in the murder case because
A:the murderer was an aristocrat. B:the murderer’s DNA has been found. C:the murderer was a famous man. D:the murderer has not been caught