The reforms that Sir David Walker recommended for the governance of banks would, if implemented, impose a huge moral responsibility on executive and nonexecutive banking directors alike. The will to exercise independent judgment without regard to personal advantage - whether money, power or status - is a rare commodity in commercial life, and it cannot simply be wrought through character transformation.rnThe proven and enduring integrity Walker requires of our boardrooms is a quality imbibed through mothers' milk and the benign influence of good company in formative years. Candidates for sainthood are rarely interested in running banks, but Walker is firm in his stance that directorial independence of mind would have prevented Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS from imploding last year. Optimistic stuff indeed, in contrast to my less sanguine but more practical solution: six years' hard labour for the chumps who believed their own lies and mired the nation in debt-laden ordure for years to come.
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