The final curtain came down on the most recent attempt by a major Australian bank to become a global player as National Australia Bank announced further management changes.NAB's 1997 annual report proclaimed its vision to be "the world's leading financial services company" and new chairman Mark Rayner and chief executive Don Argus noted "the most pervasive influence on the world banking and financial services sector is the continued globalisation of its key business segments."Newly purchased Michigan National was delivering good results, HomeSide was yet to make its impact and wholesale financial services was born as the group's first global line of business.After the recent appointment of Ahmed Fahour as regional chief executive for Australia, yesterday's management changes confirmed NAB's shrinkage back into the pack of big domestic banks, with significant overseas operations in only two other countries - New Zealand and the UK.Corporate banking, transactional solutions, custodian services, trade services and e-business have been stripped out of corporate and international banking - the successor to global wholesale financial services - and transferred to the operational control of each of the regional CEO's: Fahour in Australia, Ross Pinney in the UK and Peter Thodey in New Zealand.The remaining global lines of business - essentially, global markets, funding and financial institution relationships - get a new name, Institutional Markets and Services, and John Hooper earns a permanent seat on the group executive committee as executive general manager, after baby-sitting CIB since Ian Scholes was sacked in March over the currency options fiasco.The rump of NAB's operations in the US - the New York branch - also reports to Hooper.Group chief executive John Stewart told NAB staff yesterday that an "extensive recruitment process" had been conducted for the IM&S leadership role and Hooper "proved to be the best candidate."Like Stewart and people and culture executive Lynne Peacock, Hooper is another import from the UK, joining NAB's UK structured finance team in 1996 from merchant bank Henry Ansbacher & Co. He moved to Australia in 2002 as general manager specialised finance.Chief information officer Ian Crouch is shown the door two years after former CEO Frank Cicutto brought him back from the UK where he was heading up the strategic IT practice of EDS's AT Kearney unit.Ian MacDonald leaves his present post of head of Australian Financial Services to take on the CIO role.In the staff memo, John Stewart said that, "Ian MacDonald is one of the most experienced business leaders at the National and formerly lead the global shared services function across the group. He will bring an operational perspective to the development and implementation of information technology within the National."This is another "back to the future" move. For many years NAB preferred to fill the CIO role with a banker. In 1995, Michael Coomer - now at Westpac - became the first technologist to hold the position.Bank sources say that Crouch had filled several key IT positions with highly paid consultants and MacDonald's priority will be to restore morale among the permanent IT