A Prussian/Yankee prime-broking duopoly for the æteeniesÆ?

Mordor and Isengard, Ali and Frasier, Glitter and Slade. History is punctuated with great rivalries and combos.

The new twin towers of prime broking in Asia for the next decade might be Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley. For the second straight time they have dominated a poll, the latest held on the AsianInvestor website last week, in which just over 10,000 people voted.

The options weren't just Deutsche or Morgan Stanley. Voters had the chance to choose any of the major prime brokers. It ended up as a 53%/45% split in favour of the German firm. In third place was Goldman Sachs with 1% of the vote. Every other firm showed statistical snake eyes, with their votes aggregated as zero.

We got a message from the action man.

"We feel Deutsche Bank will be one of four or so major players that will dominate this industry both here in Asia and globally," says Harvey Twomey, the Hong Kong-based boss of Deutsche's sales and capital-introductions business in Asia. "Some prime brokers may emerge stronger in certain geographies or in specific strategy coverage, however.