Dereliction of duty

The UK Parliamentary Standards Committee on Banking Standards have published their report with the indictment - "too many bankers, especially at the most senior levels, have operated in an environment with insufficient personal responsibility.

"Senior executives were aware that they would not be punished for what they could not see and promptly donned the blindfolds.

"Where they could not claim ignorance, they fell back on the claim that everyone was party to a decision, so that no individual could be held squarely to blame - the Murder on the Orient Express defence."

It is fair to say that had the focus been on the needs of customers and shareholders as opposed to the size and division of the bonus pot, we would not have witnessed the calamity which befell the Banking system with all the attendant fall out.

It is not unusual for senior management to be detached from the business they purport to run. From my own personal experience I have worked in trading environments where totally unrealistic profit targets have been passed from Board level to trading departments. No cognisance having been given to the disproportionate risks which need to be taken to achieve these targets.

The most spectacular financial disasters have always followed a period of ostensibly highly successful trading.

In the desire to recognise these “profits” no thought were given as to how they were being made. In such times it would be well to take note of the old adage that is something looks to be too good it usually is.

Meantime as a sop to the general wish to see retribution, some of those down the food chain are now being called to account. Former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes has been charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in connection with its investigation into the manipulation of Libor.

Mr Hayes, 33, has been charged with eight counts of conspiracy to defraud these are the SFO's first criminal charges related to the Libor rigging scandal.

However the true architects of the Banking crisis remain by and large unscathed.