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Last winter Carol Galley made headlines - in the tabloids as well as in the financial press - in a hotly contested takeover battle in the City of London: television company Granada Group's $6 billion bid for Forte. As whip hand of the hotel group's biggest shareholder, Galley, vice chairman and head of U.K. institutional fund management at Mercury Asset Management, was reported to have cast the decisive vote. "Ice maiden dooms Forte," screamed one rag. "The woman who bites off heads," shrieked another.
Galley maintained an impeccable composure - a characteristic reaction for both the woman and her firm. Britain's biggest independent money manager, with $117 billion in client assets, MAM is the former Warburg Investment Management, the fund management arm of merchant bank S.G. Warburg & Co. At the old Warburg, of course, discretion and a distaste for individual self-promotion were legendary, and even though Warburg has been transformed by its new owner, Swiss Bank Corp., much of the old ethos lives on at the...