Increasingly, financial services firms are looking outside their traditional business lines for investment ideas. Deutsche s planned strategy is to forge alliances with leading software and Internet firms to capture customers both at home and abroad. Citigroup and Commerce One, meanwhile have teamed up to provide online procurement services for clients. American Express has also formed an alliance with Ariba to work on improving payments systems. These trends will continue globally and we believe will extend to cross-industry combinations that can meet a plethora of lifestyle and business needs.
Combinations involving companies in financial and telecommunications services are most logical.
But more unique combinations also are possible. The focus of these combinations will be to support the complete lifecycle needs of specific customer segments.