The Evening Standard reports that concerns are growing for the safety of wealthy investment banker Huibert Boumeester, who has gone missing and is believed to have taken two shotguns with him.

Boumeester, 49, held senior positions at ABN Amro, including stints in Asia and Europe. He left the firm in March last year. The alarm was raised when the banker failed to turn up to a meeting with a headhunting firm in London on Monday.

Westminster Police said: 'We are extremely keen to locate him as soon as possible to make sure that he is well. There is particular concern because he is a registered firearms keeper, and we cannot account for two of the firearms he owns. I would emphasize that we are concerned for his safety.....not the public's'.

In the meantime, The Financial Times reports that a US bankruptcy judge ruled Wednesday that Barclays Bank will need to comply to requests for information from Lehman Brothers Holdings as it tries to establish whether Barclays received billions of dollars in assets in error when it acquired Lehman's US businesses following the bankruptcy of the US firm last September. The judge said: 'I know from having sat there that week it was an extraordinary time in the world of global finance. It's conceivable that mistakes were made'.

And Reuters reports that Representative Darrell Issa, the highest-ranking Republican on the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee has declared that the Federal Reserve 'engaged in a cover-up, and deliberately hid concerns and pertinent details regarding the merger (between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch) from other federal regulatory agencies'.

Finally, the news agency also reported that Nomura is aiming for the very top in its quest to build an investment bank (yawn). Apparently a co-head of the firm's German operation, Patrick Schmitz-Morkramer, told journalists at a briefing earlier this week that 'our declared goal is to become a Top 5 global investment bank'. (Isn't it strange how many bankers, when they have nothing much else to say, trot out that old chestnut ?).

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