A week in the markets

Is Sallie Krawcheck, the new acceptable face of Salomon Smith Barney, about to become a Wall Street icon? It certainly looks that way. Rarely have we seen such interest in a lady Wall Street superstar - well, at least since Lehman's Elaine Garzarelli modelled fishnet stockings and other eye-catching lingerie.

Because Sallie Krawcheck is attracting far more attention than Madonna, everyone is lining up to say that they knew her when she was a mere slip of a girl from Charleston, South Carolina, with a wonderful southern lilt that clearly mesmerised her early inter-viewers.

Down in Charleston, where her dad, Lenny Krawcheck, is a bigtime lawyer and a yachtsman of some repute, they are already choosing a suitable site for a statue of the town's favourite girl.

Was Ms Krawcheck, who turns every head when she enters a room, always destined to be a financial superstar? Not quite. Close friends of ours remember when, in the early days, she was a junior credit analyst at Salomon Brothers in New York, where her skills and natural charm caught the eye of an equally youthful Jimmy Forese, who went on to run major swathes of Salomon's fixed income business.

Did our Sallie then move to London as an assistant in the investment banking division? Was that where she met and soon after married a British Salomon investment banker, John Binney, who is still with Salomon Smith Barney today and a managing director in the asset backed securities group?

Not much is known about John Binney, except that he was widely agreed to be a good egg and one of the Northumbrian Binneys, rather than the Scottish side of the family, who are actually quite posh.

Friends who used to socialise with Sallie and John Binney say that they were brilliant company. But, at this stage, when they lived modestly in pre-fashionable Notting Hill, neither was considered to be a frontrunner to become a Wall Street titan or to bump Salomon's senior partner, John Gutfreund out of the way. Sallie is remembered endearingly as a foxy brunette - the blonde tresses seem to have come later.

When the Binneys went their separate ways, Sallie returned to New York and her career began to accelerate.

Was it true...