Gulliver protests too much about bank scrutiny

HSBC Holdings chief executive Stuart Gulliver sounded more than a little peeved during the bank's results press conference when he observed in response to questions about its "compliance failures".

"It seems to me that we are holding large corporations to higher standards than the military, the church or civil service - Douglas and I should be aware of everything that is being done within the organisation," said Gulliver, referring to chairman Douglas Flint. "Can I know what every one of 257,000 people is doing - clearly I can't."

It is tempting to repeat that old mantra "he still doesn't get it". But we suspect he does. Nevertheless, we feel it is premature for banks to start getting on the front foot again. They still have a lot to answer.

The bank's governance problems were not simply a case of one rogue banker, but activities that involved whole departments. Indeed, in the heady days of the US subprime mortgage boom, a lot of people were involved - a whole section of the bank was "rogue". Yet when Lai See asked senior bankers at HSBC some years ago how all that could have happened, there was a shaking of heads around the table, and we were told "they were a law unto themselves and we never knew what was going on".