Sooner or later, non-American investment banks that aspire to be global leaders must devise a strategy for becoming players in U.S. markets, the biggest and most liquid in the world. Over the years, the efforts of these outsiders to join Wall Street's legendary bulge bracket have ranged from indifferent to disastrous. Where U.S. firms have come, in many cases, to dominate European and Asian markets, overseas financial giants have more often stumbled than succeeded here.

That record is slowly changing, as the interlopers refine their approaches. Barclays Capital, for example, is focusing primarily on the fixed-income markets and is progressing. Credit Suisse, long dogged by problems at its First Boston franchise, is showing signs of regaining its old brio.

The latest big foreign operation to take a run at the U.S. is Germany's Deutsche Bank, whose Swiss-born chief executive, Josef Ackermann, proclaims no less an ambition than to make Deutsche the leading investment bank in the world. Under his leadership, as International Editor Tom Buerkle chronicles in this month's cover story ("The Outsiders," page 44), Deutsche has undergone a stunning transformation from a lumbering domestic commercial banking giant into an increasingly sleek and powerful diversified securities house, particularly in Europe and Asia. Achieving similar stature in the U.S. remains an elusive goal.

Can Deutsche succeed? Certainly the bank and its current crop of senior executives have the strength and savvy to make a go of it. Thanks in good measure to its adept use of its balance sheet, Deutsche has become a power in sales and trading in many markets and has been trying to leverage that strength into advisory work, particularly with money-spinning leveraged buyout firms.

But climbing the ranks in the U.S. is likely to prove a more complex, subtle task. In their dealings with America's insiders -- from companies to investors -- Ackermann and his talented crew may find that approaches that succeed elsewhere won't work as well here. They will need to become masters of culture as well as of capital.