1 To clarify, Drainville's reference to Open Marxism was simply another label for Neo-Gramscian approaches, rather than a reference to the work of authors such as Werner Bonefeld and Peter Burnham. André C. Drainville, ‘International political economy in the age of open Marxism, Review of International Political Economy, 1:1 (1994), pp. 105–31.

2 The phrase ‘unasked questions’ is used by Adam Morton, ‘Unquestioned Answers/Unanswered Questions in IPE: A Rejoinder to ‘Non-Marxist’ Historical Materialism’, Debate in Politics, 27:2 (2007), pp. 132–6.

3 Mark Blyth, ‘Same as it Never Was: Temporality and Typology in the Varieties of Capitalism,’ in Comparative European Politics, 1 (2003), pp. 215–25.

4 Andrew Shonfield, Modern capitalism: the changing balance of public and private power (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). John Zysman, ‘Governments, markets and growth: financial systems and the politics of industrial change’ (Ithaca, 1983).

5 See for example, recent work on the EU accession states, Baltic states, former CEE countries.

6 Colin Crouch & Wolfgang Streeck (eds), Political Economy of Modern Capitalism. Mapping Convergence and Diversity, (Sage: London, 1997) p. 1.

7 Michel Albert, Capitalism against Capitalism (Whurr: London, 1993), p. 101.

8 Ibid., p. 15, 18–9.

9 Ibid., p. 112.

10 Ibid., pp. 19, 100–01, 108.

11 Crouch & Streeck, Political Economy of Modern Capitalism, p. ix.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., p. 3.

14 Ibid., p. 4.

15 Ibid., pp. 6–8.

16 Ibid., p. 7.

17 And as Patomaki and Wight have elsewhere convincingly argued, theoretical and conceptual foundations to an area of political analysis are often unacknowledged by later contributors, yet fundamentally shape the questions they implicitly ask of the subject matter. Heikki Patomaki & Colin Wight, ‘After Postpositivism? The Promises of Critical Realism,’ in International Studies Quarterly, 44:2 (2000), pp. 213–37.

18 This is deliberately in lower case to refer to the vast majority of accounts comparing capitalisms across Europe.

19 Blyth, Same as it Never Was (2003). P.L. Kitschelt, G. Marks, and J.D. Stephens (eds), Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 440–1. Torben Iversen, J. Pontusson, and D. Soskice, (eds), Unions, Employers and Central Banks: Macroeconomic Coordination and Institutional Change in Social Market Economies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 7–8. Peter Hall & David Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford University Press, 2001).

20 Hall & Soskice Varieties of Capitalism (2001) p. 4. Blyth, Same as it Never Was (2003), pp. 215–6.

21 Hall & Soskice Varieties of Capitalism (2001) p. 1.

22 Peter Hall and D. W. Gingerich, ‘Varieties of Capitalism and Institutional Complementarities in the Macroeconomy: an Empirical Analysis’. Article presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, August 2001. Available at: 〈http://pro.harvard.edu/papers/015/015004HallPeter0.pdf〉 (accessed 18 September 2002).

23 Hall & Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism (2001), p. 243.

24 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Translated and edited by Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, (Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p. 9.

25 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Richard Nice, (Cambidge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 21.

26 This is perhaps one of the defining features of the recent turn in the VoC debate and one which supports our argument that the depiction of the changing character of capitalisms is categorised as path dependent or convergent or both (S. Berger and R. Dore. (eds), National Diversity and Global Capitalism. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996); Robert Boyer and D Drache (eds), States Against Markets: The Limits of Globalization (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); and D. Swank, Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

27 Hall & Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism (2001), p. 55.

28 Ibid., p. 57.

29 As will be explained both the French and German examples are mentioned in this section because they are two of three country case studies employed later in the article.

30 Bob Hancké, ‘Revisiting the French Model: Coordination and Restructuring in French Industry,’ in Peter Hall & David Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 307.

31 Ibid., p. 311.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., pp. 313, 320, 324, 329, 334.

34 Stewart Wood, ‘Business, Government, and Patterns of Labor Market Policy in Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany,’ in Peter Hall & David Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 247.

35 Ibid., pp. 247–8.

36 Sigurt Vitols, ‘Varieties of Corporate Governance: Comparing Germany and the UK,’ in Peter Hall and David Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 337–50.

37 Ibid., p. 350.

38 Hall & Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism (2001), p. 8.

39 Ibid.

40 According to Smith the ‘received view’ of positivism in the social sciences is summarised in the following four tenets: a belief in the unity of science, which has been taken to mean that the same methods could be used in both natural and social sciences; a distinction between facts and values and essentially facts are theory neutral, meaning that objective knowledge of the world is possible (at least in principle); a belief in regularities in the social world as in the natural world leading to the usage of deductive-nomological and inductive-statistical methods as forms of covering law explanation; and a belief that empirical validation is the hallmark of ‘real’ enquiry. Soft-positivism is a largely implicit acceptance of the second and fourth tenets. Steve Smith, ‘Positivism and Beyond’, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds), International Theory: positivism and beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 16.

41 Vitols, Varieties of Corporate Governance (2001) p. 347. Hancké, Revisiting the French Model (2001), p. 308. Richard Carney ‘Varieties of Capitalism in France: Interests, Institutions and Finance,’ in French Politics, 4 (2006), pp. 1–30. Georg Menz, ‘Re-regulating the Single Market: national varieties of capitalism and their responses to Europeanization’, in Journal or European Public Policy 10:4 (2003), pp. 532–55.

42 Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, ‘Neoliberalizing Space,’ in Antipode 34:3 (2002), pp. 387, 384.

43 Noel Castree, ‘The epistemology of particulars: Human geography, case studies and ‘context’ (Editorial)’, Geoforum 36 (2005), pp. 542–3.

44 Andrew Gamble, ‘Neo-liberalism’, in Capital and Class 75 (2001), pp. 127–34.

45 Here the impulsion under capitalism towards cheaper sources of investment and more lucrative uses for capital have engendered a demise in traditional bank loans and the restructuring of so-called ‘national models’ of accumulation (Neil Brenner, ‘Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality and the geographical scale in globalization studies’, in Theory and Society 28 (1999), pp. 42, 62–3). In this respect though clear national differences are still apparent distinctly similar (neo-liberal) trajectories and discourses are also evident. Further, though beyond the immediate scope of this article this concept of neo-liberalism also hints at the wider social implications of a risk-based culture fuelled by capital market dependency (see, for example, Ismail Ertürk, Julie Froud, Stefano Solari and Karel Williams ‘The Reinvention of Prudence: household savings, financialisation and forms of capitalism’ ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, working paper no. 11, November 2005).

46 According to Jessop accumulation strategies ‘define a specific economic growth model for a given economic space and its various extra-economic preconditions’ whilst hegemonic projects mobilize support behind a concrete programme of objectives that explicitly or implicitly advance the long term interests of the hegemonic class (fraction) and thereby privileges particular economic-corporate interests compatible with this programme while derogating the pursuit of other particular interests that are inconsistent with the project’ Bob Jessop, ‘A Neo-Gramscian Approach to the Regulation of Urban Regimes’, in M. Lauria, (ed.), Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory, (London: Sage, 1997), pp. 61–2.

47 The connection between the heartland and our present definition of neo-liberalism is evident: the heartland being comprised of a state ‘serving’ a self-regulating civil society and allowing the expansion of private enterprise under a flexible system of common law (see Kees van der Pijl, Transnational classes and International Relations (Routledge: London, 1998), p. 4. In this article the ‘Atlantic’ heartland is conceived as a ‘model’ of economic growth to contender states experiencing crises within their traditional accumulation strategies.

48 That is, circuits of capital, scale of operations and underlying social configurations.

49 This element of variegated neo-liberalism is the focus of this article. There are, however, variegated patterns of neo-liberalisation as these ideologies reshape underlying accumulation strategies. This is where the (material-economic) evidence of convergence and path dependency emerges as ‘ideological’ elements interact with the ‘material’ elements. These patterns are alluded to but remain beyond the immediate remit of this article.

50 The work on the fractionation of capital has largely been pursued by the ‘Amsterdam school’ but here we employ the term ‘neo-Gramscian perspectives’ to distinguish these heterodox approaches from more economistic strains of Marxism which deny the dialectic of ideas and material factors (Henk Overbeek, ‘Transnational class formation and concepts of control: towards a genealogy of the Amsterdam Project in international political economy,’ in Journal of International Relations and Development 7 (2004), pp. 117.

51 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 2 translated by David Fernbach. (Penguin: Middlesex 1885 (1978), pp. 109–79. The quote is from Kees van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class. (Verso: London, 1984), p. 3.

52 Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, Social Forces in the Making of the New Europe, (Palgrave: London, 2001), p. 17.

53 Again referring to those concerned with investment and circulation.

54 van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984), p. 11.

55 van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984), p. 10; Henk Overbeek & Kees van der Pijl, ‘Restructuring Capital and Restructuring Hegemony: Neo-liberalism and the unmaking of the post-war order,’ in Overbeek, Henk, (ed.), Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy: the rise of transnational neo-liberalism in the 1980s. (Routledge: London, 1993), p. 15.

56 Bastiaan van Appeldoorn, Transnational Capitalism and the Struggle Over European Integration (Routledge: London, 2002) p. 27; see also Bieler & Morton, Social Forces (2001), p. 17; van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984), p. 5.

57 Marx, Capital volume two (1885 [1978]), pp. 109, 167.

58 Ibid., pp. 145–50. Though not listed as one of three functional forms of capital above, finance capital is then the form which transcends and integrates circuits of money capital, commodity capital and productive capital (Overbeek, Transnational Class Formation 2004, p. 118). The following points therefore apply equally to finance capital.

59 Marx, Capital volume two (1885 [1978]), p. 145.

60 Henk Overbeek, ‘Finance Capital and the Crisis in Britain,’ in Capital & Class 11 (1980), p. 101.

61 Kees van der Pijl, ‘Two faces of the transnational cadre under neo-liberalism,’ in Journal of International Relations and Development 7 (2004), p. 183.

62 Neil Brenner, ‘Globalisation as Reterritorialisation : The Re-scaling of Urban Governance in the European Union’, in Urban Studies, 36:3 pp. 438–40.

63 On the different financial systems see John Zysman, ‘Governments, markets and growth: financial systems and the politics of industrial change’ (Ithaca, 1983). On the development of capital markets see Michael Moran, ‘The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution: the USA, UK and Japan’ (Macmillan Press: Basingstoke, 1991), Susanne Lütz, ‘From Managed to Market Capitalism? German Finance in Transition,’ in German Politics, 9:2 (2000), pp. 149–70, and François Morin, ‘A transformation in the French model of shareholding and management,’ in Economy and Society, 29:1 (2000), pp. 36–53.

64 Following framework decisions by the EU institutions (Level 2) legislation undergoes comprehensive consultation with market actors (Level 2).

65 There is, one might argue, a potential difficulty in reading these policy papers as entirely indicative of the actual positions/interests of the financial service providers. This is true however, only insofar as we assume a disjuncture exists between discourse/rhetoric and material reality. Instead, as highlighted above, this article rejects this assumption; discourse and actual materiality reality are dialectically interwoven.

66 The wider research project justifies the argument that these associations tend to over-represent the interests of transnationally oriented fractions at the expense of nationally oriented institutions.

67 BBA ‘Response to CESR ISD mandate call for evidence’ (19th Feb 2004). 〈http://www.cesr-eu.org/〉 (accessed 13 April 2005).

68 BBA & LIBA, ‘A response to Consultation Paper 155’ (26th June 2003). 〈http://www.liba.org.uk/issues/2003%20papers/Tier%201%20Capital.PDF〉 (accessed 15 February 2005).

69 Interview AFEI with Julie Ansidei, Head of European Affairs, 7 September 2006. Paris.

70 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 181; Huw Macartney, ‘Articulating Particularistic Interests: the organic organisers of hegemony in Germany and France’, in British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 10:3 (2008), pp. 429–51.

71 Colin Hay, ‘The “Crisis” of Keynesianism and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Britain’, in John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen (eds), The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Anaysis (2001), p.204.

72 In outlining the neo-liberal consensus, consideration of the Atlantic responses to the CRD are considered where for the Rhenish and Gallic fractions only MiFID is examined. This is for two reasons: firstly, in relation to the claim that the neo-liberal interests are shaped in differential degrees by the scale of operations, the global operations of the Atlantic fraction involve compliance with Basel and EU standards which is less prominent with either of the other fractions; secondly though, less substantive material on the CRD was publicly available for the other two fractions. BBA & LIBA ‘Commentary on QIS 3 Technical Guidance’ (December 2002). 〈http://www.liba.org.uk/issues/2003%20papers/QI3%20Response.PDF〉 (accessed 16th February 2005). The claim that policy discourses are overtly ‘neo-liberal’ is inherently problematic. Our relatively broad definition, however, sufficiently highlights their commonalities Gamble Neo-liberalism (2001), pp. 131–2.

73 A term used to describe ‘gold-plating’ or adding to already complex legislation.

74 To clarify, capital adequacy is a term referring to the ratio of a banks capital to its assets. Regulators such as the Basel Committee of Banking Supervisors attempt to ensure that a bank retains sufficient capital to meet its liabilities should the need arise. Banks operating across several regulatory jurisdictions therefore risk compliance with several divergent capital adequacy standards.

75 BBA & LIBA, A response to Consultation Paper 155 (June 2003).

76 Ibid.

77 BBA & LIBA Response to CP 136: Individual Capital Adequacy Standards (26th June 2003) 〈http://www.liba.org.uk/issues/2003%20papers/Individual%20Capital%20Adequacy%20Standards.PDF〉 (accessed 14th February 2005)

78 Ibid.

79 BBA & LIBA A response to Consultation Paper 155 (June 2003).

80 Citigroup, ‘Response to CP 189’ (23 April 2003). Personal correspondence with Mr Simon Hills (BBA, Director).

81 RBS, Response to CP189 (2003). Personal correspondence with Simon Hills (BBA, Director) (16th April).

82 The traditional distinction here is between US ‘prescriptive’ and UK/European ‘principles-based’ regulation (c.f. Michael Moran The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution: the USA, UK and Japan, (Macmillan Press: Basingstoke, 1991). Here the use of principles-based regulation reveals a particular form of neo-liberalism which supports the argument that the Atlantic fraction has a historic relationship with these arrangements in the UK.

83 This is a reference to market actors and mechanisms.

84 van der Pijl The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984), p. 10.

85 BBA & LIBA ‘Response to CP136’ (June 2003).

86 BBA & LIBA ‘CP 189: Implementation of new Basel and EU Capital Adequacy Standards’ (12 December 2003) 〈http://www.jmlsg.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=155&a=1566〉 (accessed 17 February 2005)

87 BBA ‘Response to CESR advice on possible implementing measures of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (2nd part of response – Best Execution and Transparency)’ (5 October 2004), 〈http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=155&a=4535〉 (accessed 17 March 2005); see also LIBA, Joint Response to CESR's November 2004 consultation on Draft Technical Advice on Possible Implementing Measures of the Directive 2004/39/EC on Markets in Financial Instruments (MIFID, 1st Set of Mandates, 2nd consultation) 〈http://www.cesr-eu.org/〉 (accessed 8 April 2005); Barclays ‘Second Consultation paper on the first set of mandates regarding possible implementing measures for the Market in Financial Instruments Directive’. (2004) 〈http://www.cesr-eu.org/〉http://www.cesr-eu.org/ (accessed 15 April 2005).

88 For example, the BdB clearly states that crises, ‘have led to the realisation that Germany's current economic and social problems cannot be solved by a traditional approach’ (emphasis added) BdB Banking Survey 2004 〈http://www.bankenbericht.de/pdf/Bb_2004_%20en.pdf〉 (accessed 19th August 2005); see also HVB Annual Report 2004. 〈http://www.hvbgroup.com/-snm-0134963952–1126663331-0000009459–0000000510-1126694385-enm-system/galleries/download/en/ir/Reports/2005–03-17_gb_2004_konzern.pdf〉 (accessed 14 September 2005), DZ Bank, 2004 Annual Report 〈http://www.dzbank.de/internet_en/index.jsp;jsessionid=0000KHsgedFycx-bDdZ_wyIcroK:10mv51hct?fname=index.html&path=%2Fprofile%2Fdzbank%2Finvestor_relations_engl&rname=internet_en_profile&flagSite=false&mEE=profile&mZE=dzbank&mDE=investor_relations_engl&m4E=&m5E=&m6E=&flagNav=true&isExternal=true&download=%2Finternet_gr%2F_profil%2F_downloads%2Fannual_report_2004.pdf〉 (accessed 14 September 2005).

89 BdB Banking Survey (2004).

90 Ibid.

91 BdB ‘Continuing the Integration of European Markets for Financial Services’ (March 2004) 〈http://www.bankenverband.de/download/broschueren/br0403_vw_azf_eudl_en.pdf〉 (accessed 18th August 2005)

92 BdB Annual Report (2004).

93 BdB Annual Report 2002. 〈http://www.bankenbericht.de/banken2002/pdf/SUMMARY.pdf〉 (accessed 22 August 2005).

94 Although the precise content and development of these crises is beyond the remit of this article it is noted that these are crises of accumulation. Marx contended that the contradictions of the capitalist system fuelled an inherent crisis tendency (Capital: a critique of political economy, vol. 3, translated by David Fernbach (1883 [1981]) Penguin: Harmondsworth p. 242. The wider research project, of which this article forms a part, goes further in explaining that these crises constitute precipitating, delimiting moments in changes of accumulation strategy.

95 Van Apeldoorn, Transnational Capitalism, (Routledge: London, 2002). See for example, BdB, ‘Towards More Growth With the Lisbon Strategy’ (June 2005). 〈http://www.bankenverband.de/pic/artikelpic/062005/vo0506_pr_lisbon-english-summary.pdf〉 (accessed 18 August 2005).

96 Interview Deutsche Bank with Dr Bernhard Speyer, Head of Deutsche Research, 12 September 2006. Frankfurt.

97 IFD Report on Finanzstandort Deutschland (2005) No. 1 〈http://www.finanzstandort.de/download/IFD_Finanzstandort_Bericht_Nr-1_Teil-1_en.pdf〉 (accessed 30 August 2005).

98 Koch-Weser, Caio, ‘Financial sector as an engine for growth and employment,’ Speech by the State Secretary as part of the Parliamentary Evening on the Initiative Finanzstandort Deutschland (IFD) in Brüssels (14 February 2005). 〈http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/cln_04/nn_6512/sid_DA97B6429F6E01CD4AF8E77642DF30F9/nsc_true/EN/News/Speeches/002.html〉 (accessed 29th August 2005).

99 This will be explained in the second half of the article.

100 See, for example, Ben Clift, ‘The French Model of Capitalism: Still Exceptional’, in Jonathan Perrino & Ben Clift (eds), Where Are National Capitalisms Now? (Palgrave, 2004), pp. 91–110.

101 Interview with AFEI (2006).

102 FBF, ‘French bankers rally in Brussels and propose five principles for a unified European banking and financial services market,’ (10th June 2003) 〈http://www.fbf.fr/Web/internet/content_europe.nsf/(WebPageList)/French+bankers+rally+in+Brussels+and+propose+five+principles+for+a+unified+European+banking+and+financial+services+market?Open〉 (accessed 29th April 2005).

103 FBF, Annual Report 2004 〈http://www.fbf.fr/web/internet/content_fbf.nsf/(WebPageList)/Rapport+d+activite/$File/RAPPORT-ACTIVITE_FBF_2004.pdf〉 (accessed 29 April 2005).

104 Geoffrey Underhill, ‘The Making of the European Financial Area: Global market integration and the EU Single Market for financial services,’ in Geoffrey Underhill (ed.), The New World Order in International Finance. (Macmillan Press, 1997), pp. 101–23; Benn Steil, Illusions of Liberalization: securities regulation in Japan and the EC. The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House: London, 1995); Philip Brown, ‘The Making of the European Financial Area: Global market integration and the EU Single Market for financial services’, in Geoffrey Underhill (ed.), The New World Order in International Finance, (Macmillan Press, 1997), pp. 124–43.

105 FBF Management Report 2003. 〈http://www.fbf.fr/Web/internet/content_europe.nsf/(WebPageList)/management+report+2003/$File/FBF_management-report_2003.pdf〉 (accessed 28 April 2005).

106 AFEI, ‘The role of CESR at ‘Level 3’ under the Lamfalussy process’. (2004) 〈http://www.cesr-eu.org/〉 (accessed 4 May 2005).

107 AFEI, ‘Implementing Measures For The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive First CESR Mandate: Observations of the French Association of Investment Firms (AFEI) on Best Execution and Market Transparency’. (2004) 〈http://www.cesr-eu.org/〉 (accessed 5 May 2005).

108 FBF, ‘La future directive européenne sur l'adéquation des fonds propres,’ (2003) 〈http://www.fbf.fr/web/internet/content_presse.nsf/(WebPageList)/992F51B03AAB8C4DC1256D9100507E8E〉 (accessed 26 April 2005). FBF, Press release – Solvency ratio: Basel II and the European Directive must be consistent (2003), 〈http://www.fbf.fr/web/internet/content_europe.nsf/(WebPageList)/71F88DB9D2891B80C1256DCC004A90C3〉 (accessed 25 April 2005).

109 Steil, Illusions of Liberalization, (1995).

110 Interview with AFEI. The claim that the Gallic fraction have retained strong linkages with nationally oriented social forces is developed in the wider research project.

111 FBF Press release – Solvency ratio: Basel II and the European Directive must be consistent (2003) 〈http://www.fbf.fr/web/internet/content_europe.nsf/(WebPageList)/71F88DB9D2891B80C1256DCC004A90C3〉 (accessed 25 April 2005)

112 van Appeldoorn, Transnational Capitalism (2002) pp. 79–80.

113 Ibid., 158.

114 Ibid., 159.

115 Ibid., 160. The term coherent does not here negate the fact that this project comprises conflicting, contradictory tendencies.

116 Angela Teke, Personal correspondence with Angela Teke, Director, BBA, 18 February 2005.

117 In this respect the German system operates a hybrid comprising prominent stock exchanges and universal banks trading on their own account, much like UK investment banks.

118 c.f. Jean-Pierre Casey & Karel Lanoo, ‘The MiFID Implementing Measures : Excessive detail or level playing field?’, in ECMI Policy Brief 1 (2006), p. 6.

119 BBA ‘Response to CESR advice on possible implementing measures of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments’ (2004).

120 BBA ‘BBA Response to CESR advice on possible implementing measures of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments’ (17 September 2004). 〈http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=155&a=4483〉 (accessed 16 March 2005).

121 BBA ‘Response to CESR advice on possible implementing measures of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (1st Consultation on 2nd Set of Mandates)’ (21 January 2005). 〈http://www.bba.org.uk/content/1/c4/50/95/BBA_MIFID_Response_2nd_mandate_%2821_Jan_05%29.pdf〉 (accessed 15th March 2005).

122 Defined as ‘approved intermediaries who, on an organised, frequent and systematic basis, execute equity orders from their clients in-house (these intermediaries generally hold cash and securities accounts for these clients), by acting as a counterparty, that is by taking the transaction on their own trading position’ (Directive 2004/39/EC).

123 BBA ‘Response to CESR advice on possible implementing measures of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments’ (January 2005).

124 LIBA, Joint Response to CESR's March 2005 consultation on Draft Technical Advice on Possible Implementing Measures of the Directive 2004/39/EC on Markets in Financial Instruments (MIFID): Investment advice, best execution, market transparency, Second consultation paper (2005) 〈http://www.cesr-eu.org/〉 (accessed 6 April 2005).

125 Ibid.

126 BBA ‘Response to CESR advice on possible implementing measures of the Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments’ (2005).

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid.

129 Ibid.

130 Ibid.

131 FBF ‘French bankers rally in Brussels’ (June 2003).

132 FBF Management Report (2003).

133 FBF ‘French bankers rally in Brussels’ (June 2003). This might appear to contradict the notion that the French system of cross-shareholdings has been in decline since the mid 1990s. Nonetheless, the demise of the so-called ‘French model’ should not be overemphasised: interlocking shareholdings remain a substantive feature of the French system and even the entry of foreign capital has not completely negated French corporate governance mechanisms (Ben Clift, The French Model of Capitalism (2004), François Morin, A Transformation in the French Model (2000).

134 FBF Management Report (2003).

135 FBF ‘French bankers rally in Brussels’ (June 2003).

136 Ibid.

137 Ibid.

138 Interview with Deutsche Bank.

139 Given the hybrid character of the German financial system the Rhenish fraction do not express the more extreme positions on MiFID typified in the Gallic and Atlantic cases. Hence, here we rely primarily on a wider range of material.

140 C.F. Zysman, Governments, Markets (1983), Albert, Capitalism versus Capitalism (1993).

141 HVB Annual Report (2004).

142 BdB Annual Report (2002).

143 Manfred Weber, The German Banking Market: I. Structural change,’ in Die Bank: Zeitschrift fur Bankpolitik und Praxis (2002). 〈http://www.die-bank.de/index.asp?issue=062002&channel=121010&art=190〉 (accessed 23rd August 2005).

144 Essentially the extent to which the operations of the Rhenish fraction are global or European in scale varied according to which member firm/bank is being considered.

145 IFD Report on Finanzstandort Deutschland (2005).

146 BdB Annual Report (2004).

147 IFD Report on Finanzstandort Deutschland (2005).

148 Ibid.

149 DZ Bank, Annual Report (2004)

150 Ibid.

151 Adam Morton, ‘The grimly comic riddle of hegemony in IPE: where is class struggle?,’ Politics, 26:1 (2006), pp. 62–72.

152 William Robinson and Jerry Harris, ‘Towards A Global Ruling Class? Globalization and the Transnational Capitalist Class,’ in Science and Society, 64:1 (2000), pp. 11–54.

153 Robinson and Harris, ‘Towards A Global Ruling Class?’ (2000), pp. 11–2.

154 Drainville, ‘International Political Economy (1994).

155 Peck & Tickell, ‘Neoliberalizing Space’ (2004), p. 387, Castree ‘The epistemology of particulars’ (2005), p. 542.

156 Gamble, Neo-liberalism (2001).