In one of the more revealing exchanges, he said the system at the time had lost its focus as it juggled the task of merging organisations.

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Add to that the enormous task of merging Digital Equipment Corp. into Compaq and sorting out the resulting 68, 000-employee roster, and it's little wonder that Capellas' predecessor, Eckhard Pfeiffer, was shown the door.

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Merging different cultures is no easy task, a lesson which those European banks busily expanding into investment banking are learning painfully.

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