I’m told the extremely tardy official report into the collapse of HBOS will be published early in the New Year and will contain criticism of the former chairman, Lord Stevenson, and chief executive, Andy Hornby. Whether it also imposes sanctions is another matter.
We now know what the price of failure is for the CEO of a wrecked bank. Fred Goodwin at RBS set the tariff: a lost knighthood and a third off the pension. Now James Crosby at HBOS has fallen into line. But what should happen to the chairmen?
The Parliamentary Commission report repays careful reading, not least for its strident criticism of the board and their habit of self-congratulation rather than rigorous challenge.
The significance of the HBOS report from the Parliamentary Commission is not in any new evidence it has uncovered – we always knew why the bank went bust – but in the uncompromising way in which it named the men primarily responsible for bringing it down, chairman Lord Stevenson and chief executives Sir James Crosby and Andy Hornby.
Evasive, repetitive, unrealistic. Unless my old newspaper instincts have deserted me that description by Andrew Tyrie of Lord Stevenson’s evidence to the Parliamentary Commission, is what will make the headlines. And the former HBOS-chairman will find it hard to outlive the label.
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