31.   Abdullah said the alliance was ready to attend a meeting as early as this week.

32.   Alliances are also far easier in global operations, Friedheim writes.

33.   Alliances will be the key to the effort.

34.   Alliances are a means to achieve faster, cheaper growth.

35.   Alliances are untrustworthy precisely because human personality is so fluid.

36.   Alliances have been formed, broken and reformed.

37.   Both companies stressed that their alliance was not exclusive, and that they were free to work with other partners to develop electronic banking services.

38.   But a security alliance is the wrong mechanism.

39.   But an analyst said the PricewaterhouseCoopers alliance was a major coup.

40.   But for many of the other partners, the alliance is a marriage of convenience that could eventually give way to a family feud.