Tucked away in the corner of Bob Diamond's Canary Wharf office - among the Barclays Capital chief's golfing paraphernalia - is a ball adorned with the beaming face of Martin Taylor, his former boss.
The trinket speaks volumes about Mr Diamond's 14-year career building BarCap from a non-entity into a bulge-bracket investment bank - and his drive to scotch the scepticism of Mr Taylor, the Barclays chief executive who hired him in 1996 but within two years lost confidence in the business and tried to close it.
"The board was attached to this fantasy of a UK [investment banking] champion," Mr Taylor recalled in a 2002 interview. "It was absurd, absolutely absurd."
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