The series centred on the employees of Gardner Ross, an investment bank in the Bay Street financial district of Toronto, Ontario.

Bruce Gray and Sonja Smits starred as the firm's senior partners, Adam Cunningham and Sally Ross.

[3] The exterior shots of Gardner Ross are of the Canada Permanent Trust Building at 320 Bay Street in Toronto, currently the offices of CIBC Mellon.

Gardner Ross is a small Canadian investment bank that is somewhat profitable, but often faces a takeover by a larger institution due to its inability to compete in a global marketplace.

Crisis strikes when senior partner Cedric Ross is jailed after money goes missing from an initial public offering.

Luckily, head trader Marty Stephens saves the day by making a large profit for the bank selling the issue into a cool market.

Sally decides to take the company public to raise capital to pay off the larger bank, but with Adam's help this results in Cedric being able to buy enough shares to re-take control of Gardner Ross and force Sally out for ordering Marty to keep buying Gardner Ross stock in a futile attempt to stop him, technically violating capital requirements.

However, Jack is betrayed by Ann on a software investment and goes bankrupt when his shares in Gardner Ross don't cover the amount he borrowed to buy them.

Marty wants nothing to do with her although to get him to agree to sell a very poor bond issue (and ruin his reputation in the process), he is given managerial control of the firm.

Sally pursues a relationship with a smitten billionaire, Phil Hoagland, but cuts it off when she realizes he suffers from bipolar disorder and will not take medication to control it.

After this major crisis, most of the rest of the series concentrates on the relationship between the character's personal lives and their work at the bank.

The investment bankers often trade blows with the much larger (if fictional) Canadian Corporate Bank (most likely based on one of Canada's Big Five).

The trading floor's key competition is Federated Dundas, a brokerage firm with ten times the staff and capital, and the home of Marty's nemesis "McGrath" (played in a memorable cameo by Joe Flaherty, although otherwise unseen during the series).

On the other extreme, Ann is so disconnected from a family life that she listed Gardner Ross as her person to contact in case of an emergency.

Niko perhaps has the worst relationship history, cutting herself off from her own son in order to further her career, only to find herself caring for the child when her ex-husband is arrested.

Marty is constantly "walking the line" on ethical issues, taking advantage of information that doesn't quite meet the criteria for insider trading on a near daily basis.