Who shot Connor Killeen, the greatest living Irish folk hero since Peter O'Toole, Stout Murphy and Molly Malone? The co-head of equities at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein had almost become part of the furniture but to give him full credit, he had helped to build a very decent equities business at the bank which was a regular contender for the middleweight title and on a good day and with the crowd cheering, could punch well above its slender appearance. Killeen was one of the better residents of the old UBS stable which was mainly filled with no-hopers and chancers. For Kleinwort Benson, then going nowhere but sideways, he was a brilliant hire. The equity capital markets area, especially in IPOs, is not a user-friendly business and the best training ground would be in an amphitheatre facing the equivalents of Russell Crowe
May 11, 2001