In 1989, Alfred Herrhausen, the charismatic chairman of the board of directors of the German financial giant Deutsche Bank, was assassinated. It was a shocking act quickly blamed on the Red Army Faction (FAR), a far-left German terrorist group. who, ten years earlier, had killed a number of leading capitalist figures, including Jürgen Ponto, the director of the Dresdner Bank, and Hanns Martin Schleyer, the president of the German Employers' Association.