Please direct me to an industry-standard model of the back-office
operations of investment banks.  This model would describe costs,
staffing and service quality of processes.  A model of middle-office
operations is not acceptable.  A model of back-office operations of
other types of banks is not acceptable.

Hi Antonk,

I have a couple of suggestions for you - I haven't found much on the
Web that resembles what you're looking for, unfortunately, as much of
what's out there is a) subscription based and expensive or b) much
more general (you can take a look at
http://www.itpapers.com/cgi/SubcatIT.pl?scid=74 to see some examples
of the kinds of white papers I found - investment banking OR back
office operations, but not both!) but there are some fairly recent
books available that address this area. I don't know where you're
located, so I haven't been able to check and see if they're available
at libraries near you, but feel free to get back to me if you'd like
me to do that.

Excellence in investment banking operations
Herwig Leins
Imprint London: Euromoney Books, c 2000
http://www.biz-lib.com/ZEMB297.html

The business of investment banking / K. Thomas Liaw.  
Imprint New York : J. Wiley, c1999. 
Excellence in investment banking operations
Herwig Leins
Imprint London: Euromoney Books, c 2000
http://www.biz-lib.com/ZEMB297.html

The business of investment banking / K. Thomas Liaw.  
Imprint New York : J. Wiley, c1999. 

I simply used the Library of Congress subject heading for "investment
banking" and browsed the results in the New York Public Library's
catalog, CATNYP (cute, right?)

I hope that helps!

Libronaut

Oh, sorry - search strategies that didn't work online (for me, anyway...) 

+"back office" +process +"investment banking"
+"back office" +"white papers"
+"investment bank" +(operations OR processes)
+"investment bank" +"industry standard" 
+"back office" +"investment bank" +("best practices" OR benchmark)

Hope that helps!!