Future years will be dictated by the cost of paying for rescuing the financial system. They will also be dominated by governments’ attempts to sell its stakes in two enormous banks. Perhaps the two are connected.
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The idea of former Royal Bank of Scotland chairman Sir Tom McKillop
seeking re-election as a director of BP reminds me of the joke about the drunken magistrates.
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Where do the pension funds suing Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS) and its former directors think the money will come from? If the bank had the resources to pay damages, the shareholders wouldn’t be sitting on losses.
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ABNAmro and HBoS have both brought down the banks that bought them but they are completely different. Royal Bank of Scotland’s mistake was to overpay for a good bank; Lloyds’ error was to buy a lousy bank.
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If share options given when Royal Bank of Scotland’s shares were flying high were generous, options granted now that the shares are lying low are munificent. New chairman Sir Philip Hampton is in line for a bonus that could make Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension look like peanuts.

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There is something perverse about a recession-hit company being bullied by a bank whose own finances are in a far worse state. When it comes to renegotiating loans, borrowers should exploit the banks’ weaknesses.
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The MPs grilling executives of the failed banks are using hindsight to criticise. We all know they got it wrong: the constructive conclusion would be to say when exactly the regulators should have intervened.
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The Treasury has got confused between saving banks and saving the banking system. It should seize outright control of the worst banks simply to ensure it reaps the reward of saving them.
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Before Royal Bank of Scotland gives all its customers a six-month mortgage holiday it should remember that 42 per cent of its shares are still in private hands.
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