For a lesson on how to keep your job when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, one need look no farther than the bosses of Britain's biggest banks. Their once-mighty institutions, among the world's largest, have been humbled. Their shareholders have been hammered. Many of their employees will soon be looking for work, and they have wreaked havoc on the economy. Yet apart from the head of Northern Rock, which suffered a run on deposits last year and had to be nationalised, no boss of a major British bank has left in shame. (The man who ran Bradford & Bingley, a small, troubled bank, stepped down this month, saying that the stress was bad for his heart.)rnThe remarkable tenacity of British bank bosses stands in sharp contrast to those running banks elsewhere in Europe and in America, many of whom have been eased out over the past year. That so few British heads have rolled is not a sign that British banks have avoided the worst of the credit crunch, or that their bosses have done a better job of steering them through turbulent waters. If anything, it suggests the opposite: that shareholders are so wor- ried about the state of the banks, and public confidence in them, that they dare not call loudly for changes in management.
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