The nation of 50 million inhabitants is essentially divided in two, with much of eastern Congo disintegrating into warlord fiefs preyed upon by ethnically based militias.
Mr. Quattrone left Morgan Stanley in 1996, having been rebuffed by Mr. Mack in an attempt to build a larger investment banking fief with his own research analysts, based in Silicon Valley in California.
With its own parliament, the royal fief has its own set of laws based on Norman law.
Based on a 1391 list of fiefs, the town counted ca. 300 hearths, making it among the largest in the Principality.
A system in which the entire state structure was based on contractual personal arrangements between superiors and inferiors (lords and vassals)—with land (fiefs) being the traditional means of reward for services did not really prevail in Poland.
Mr. Rafiq, based in Washington, continued, "Nazir would probably have wanted to hold on to his local jihadist fief, making him a long-term threat for the Pakistani state".
"We have a significantly internationalised financial system, in which shocks are quickly transmitted across borders," he said, "but a nationally based structure of regulation".Other countries are taking similar steps to carve big banks into separate operational fiefs.
A not uncommon view is that his recent move from London, where he had his power base, to New York, the fief of Chase Carey, the chief operating officer and his direct boss, was more of an emasculation than a promotion.
Meanwhile, Caragiale found his core group of journalist sympathizers in the Junimist fief of Moldavia.
At home, in the fief allotted to him in the Wei River valley (in modern Gansu and Shaanxi provinces), he established a competent administration and a supply base.
