As the city's law firms have grown, so have its accountancy, merchant-banking and venture-capital businesses.

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The boutique merchant banking firm specializes in cross-border transactions with a focus on assisting clean tech and energy-related companies expand into China and raise capital.

FORBES: Go East, Young Entrepreneur!

Trustwave security experts test many mobile applications every year, usually fitting into one of two categories: free merchant or service-provider applications targeting consumer users (mobile banking applications, grocery store applications, etc.) and applications used by brick-and- mortar merchants for roving sales clerks.

FORBES: Is Your Mobile App Safe?

If a lumber merchant in Philadelphia financed his inventory with a short-term loan, that loan would enter the banking system as an asset and somewhere down the line occasion the issuance of banknotes used to pay the lumberjacks in Wisconsin.

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The claim is far-fetched: the merchant banks' collapse, should it happen, would have less impact on the banking system than on the dodgy companies the merchant banks have been forced to lend to.

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