Ha! That's decent of you. I was actually quite proud of the site weight. The orange triangle gifs - one pointing to the right and another pointing downwards - weighed almost nothing, and everything nav-wise was optimised (transparency out of background colour) to the max. The nav font was their bespoke version of frutiger, hence the need for graphical nav elements.

When it all worked, there used to be historical quotes, which I'd culled from a privately published Barings history book I found in their offices, that appeared under the l-h nav elements. One, from Cardinal Richelieu, referred to Barings as one of the "three major powers in Europe".

The book also related how Barings joined forces with its archenemy Rothschilds (under the auspices of the British Relief Association [1]) to provide relief to Ireland during the potato famine, in the absence of meaningful action from the British government.

I really enjoyed the work, and learnt a lot of history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Relief_Association

I agree. This site looks fine for its time. Above-average, even.