Going across the pond.

The article focuses on the increasing partnership of British merchant banks with London stockbrokers and market makers. The City is reacting to regulatory changes that will probably reshape most firms into multifaceted U.S.-style investment banks. London's biggest merchant bank, Kleinwort Benson, went to the colonies for one of its partners. Kleinwort spent $27 million to acquire Chicago-based ACLI Government Securities, one of Dealing in governments fits neatly with Kleinwort's other recent U.S. acquisition, the interest rate swap team from Los Angeles' First Interstate Bancorp.