Bob Diamond - Robert E Diamond Jnr, as he signs himself - is a figure gloriously out of place at a stuffy UK clearing bank. The chief executive of Barclays Capital is Wall Street through-and-though, trained as a Morgan Stanley bond trader and polished as a vice-chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston.

His is a fiercely contemporary management style. Think Tony Blair with more testosterone, Bill Clinton with less. Here is the Third Way investment banker: a leader rather than a manager, a businessman whose greatest asset is his charisma.