From the 30th floor of One Canada Square, the tallest skyscraper in the UK, you can see the rest of London spreading out into the distance in all its grime and splendour. It was here, in a slick boardroom, that the three top executives of Canary Wharf, a vast complex of office towers in the east of London, watched the terrorist attacks of 9/11 unfold on television.
There was Paul Reichmann, the sombre, softly spoken septuagenarian who had built the estate; George Iacobescu, its Romanian-born chief executive; and Peter Anderson, the American finance director.
