It insists that the Chinese walls separating its traders and bankers are always impermeable.
We have seen it in investment banks where Chinese walls have been ignored and information freely passed about.
Bankers protest that unbundling or putting businesses and competencies into different compartments behind Chinese walls will not suit investors.
ECONOMIST: The limits to removing banks' conflicts of interest
The only Chinese Walls are in China and separate subsidiaries still share a common economic purpose, if not common employees.
Other strong men have done the same, using Mr Jordan to pass messages through the Chinese walls that imprison them.
Chinese walls or no, it is no accident that most proprietary-trading desks are placed in the middle of the trading floor.
Carlyle has promised to erect Chinese walls between itself and AlpInvest, part of its ongoing efforts to polish a public image that has been battered in the past.
Given the scale of the cultural failure, it is hard to see how any system that relies on bank's maintaining Chinese Walls can continue to command public confidence.
Generally, banks say "Chinese walls" separate analysts from deal makers.
Moves to outsource parts of their business to other financial firms or processing centres will also be rewarded by the market, as analysts and regulators see more Chinese walls going up.
Supposedly independent analysts working behind Chinese walls were paid millions of dollars, not for the quality of their advice to investors but for helping to secure corporate-finance deals from the companies they were analysing.
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The market-abuse directive did not take on board the way that investment banks address internal conflicts of interest with Chinese walls, for instance nor the sophistication of many investors who do not need costly protection from abuse.
Pensions are in a better position to know of the conflicts of interest related to an advisor but all-too-often accept assurances from management of these firms that Chinese Walls and other internal operating procedures are adequate to protect against harm.
KPMG's Chinese walls were not sufficiently strong to enable it to take on a case for the Brunei Investment Authority, having previously been employed as a forensic accountant by Prince Jefri, a former chairman of the authority, and the sultan's younger brother.
Banks insist their size and scale brings benefits to society, allowing them to glean insights from different markets and pass on this information advantage to customers while managing conflicts of interest between their own and client interests by way of Chinese Walls between units.
But politicians rule a realm where rhetoric trumps reality, where they imagine they can guarantee corporate purity with Chinese walls and chastity belts among analysts and bankers, forced recusals by "interested parties, " mandated "independent" board members, executive seals and signatures on all accounts, back-checks and other fake remedies imported from the world of law and politics.
Unsurprisingly, many emperors were insulated by the luxury they lived in and knew little of the dire conditions endured by most ordinary Chinese outside the palace walls.
Tourists and locals alike came to gawk at its Chinese antiques, hand-painted walls, and the intricately carved and gilded dragons in its lobby ceiling.
Even the Chinese characters you see on the walls here were banned during that time because Suharto believed they might contain a hidden political message.
"We want to make people feel as if they are home, " says Wei Cheng, a hotel manager in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, although few Chinese homes have Day-Glo walls.
Less than a generation ago, Chinese villagers crowded around newspapers pasted to walls in the center of town to read the latest news.
When the capital eventually shifted to Bangkok and the Grand Palace was built in 1782, the Chinese were requested to move outside the city walls.
In the Chinese business environment, even the virtual world has real walls.
Mr. Hua also wanted to keep the essence of the Chinese farm house, including the tiled roof and the whitewashed walls.
When police in China's small towns plaster walls with slogans like CATHOLICS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ENGAGE IN ILLEGAL PROPAGATION ACTIVITIES, Chinese no longer nod their heads and agree.
CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | China: Inside China's Search for Its Soul
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