So much to talk about, so little time.
The Commons Treasury Committee could hardly have known where to start in their inquisition yesterday of Stuart Gulliver and Douglas Flint, HSBC chief executive and chairman respectively.
The role of the bank's Swiss operations in an international tax evasion scandal? HSBC's relationship with the press, the Daily Telegraph in particular? Mr Gulliver's fascinating personal affairs that have seen him shift £5 million of his considerable earnings to Switzerland via a Panama company simply, he says, to avoid the scrutiny of colleagues? Or perhaps the fact that the man in charge of a bank headquartered in Britain prefers to be domiciled in Hong Kong?
These are only the latest in a long series of controversies involving HSBC - money laundering scarcely got a mention yesterday - but they were more than enough to be going on with. The bank that took no little pride in seeming to come through the 2008 crash unscathed has had little to boast about since.
So what was served up to MPs? Apologies, of course. Those are now standard operating procedure, it seems, for bankers confronting evidence of wrongdoing. Mr Gulliver acknowledged the reputational damage, Mr Flint spoke of shame. Then, on cue, came reassurance: standards at HSBC are much higher, we were promised, than hitherto. Besides, 70 per cent of the "relationship managers" who caused the Swiss mess are gone.
Problems solved, then? We can hope. International banking has a knack, however, for piling outrage upon outrage. No blame attaches to Mr Gulliver or Mr Flint for past debacles, but the former hardly inspires confidence when he assumes that whistleblowing is a bad thing. The latter is meanwhile mistaken if he thinks criticism is answered because he waives bonuses.
Mr Gulliver sticks to the letter of the law covering non-domicile rules. He pays all the tax he is due in the UK. His wealth has travelled far, but there is "no tax purpose" behind its journeys. Mr Flint meanwhile finds tax evasion abhorrent. This is good to know.
Why, then, has the reputation of HSBC suffered such damage? The failure of corporate governance has been colossal, yet supposedly no one who matters - or mattered - has been at fault. Yesterday, neither man was able to explain that singular fact.
Lin Homer, chief executive of HMRC, meanwhile failed to add much to the tale of HSBC and the tax authorities. She boasted, once again, that £135m has been recovered and explained to MPs that UK taxation is "incredibly complex". The one solid piece of information offered was that the leaked Swiss data can now be shared with law enforcement agencies. The hope for real answers survives.
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