BZW chief dies in France

David Band, chief executive of BZW, the investment bank owned by Barclays Bank, died of a heart attack on Thursday while on a family skiing trip in France. He was 53. He collapsed while on holiday in Val D'Isere with his wife Olivia and their two children, Ben and Isabelle.

Mr Band was made chief executive of BZW in 1988, joining the main board of Barclays at the same time. He had spent most of his career with JP Morgan, which he joined in 1964. By 1987 he had become executive vice- president of the American investment bank, having headed up key departments in Paris, Singapore and New York.

Don Brydon, BZW's deputy chief executive, took over as acting chief executive yesterday. Mr Brydon immediately circulated a note to all staff which said: "David will be remembered by us all as the man who led the successful emergence of BZW as a global investment bank. To those of us who knew him he will also be remembered as a friend whose loss is hard to bear."

A popular and affable figure within and outside the bank, Mr Band was also remembered at yesterday morning's directors' meeting in BZW, which observed a one-minute silence.

At BZW Mr Band inherited the problems of welding several completely different firms into a single investment bank. Several other such attempts have since either failed or passed into overseas ownership.

BZW was created in response to Big Bang, the deregulation of London's securities industry in the mid-1980s. BZW was created by the merger of Barclays Merchant Bank, Barclays Investment Management, brokers de Zoete & Bevan and jobbers Wedd Durlacher.

BZW's first chief executive, Lord Camoys, was forced to stand down through ill-health and was succeeded in 1988 for six months by Andrew Buxton, who subsequently became chairman and chief executive of Barclays Bank. Mr Band was then recruited from JP Morgan to continue the merger process. BZW now has 8,500 employees world-wide.