Conflating public and private lives makes fools of us all

Conflating public and private lives makes fools of us all

As financiers from RBS’s Fred Goodwin to Northern Rock’s Adam Applegarth and the IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn have demonstrated, senior bankers are quite as likely as, say, Boris Johnson and members of the SNP to embark on extramarital relationships, sometimes discovered before they move on, sometimes not. Though given the superhuman abilities reflected in the bankers’ salaries, it should be emphasised that they are obviously many thousands of times better at conducting affairs than the average married person and would take their talents abroad if anyone questioned their rewards in this respect, with grievous consequences for the British economy.

António Horta-Osório, the CEO of Lloyds Banking Group, is entitled to ask why his recent sightseeing in Singapore, accompanied by the chief executive of the Russell Group, Wendy Piatt, was of such interest to Sun readers, that the paper revealed it, beneath the front-page headline: Lloyds Bonk. That the bank is still 9% state-owned cannot amount to the public’s right to CEO uxoriousness or not, anyway, at the same time that the once-dedicated shagger Boris Johnson is promoted to prime minister’s understudy.

If anything, modern Westminster shows that, while not exactly compulsory, a furious extra-marital sex life is a tremendous way for a male public servant to create interest and progress his career. On the left, John, now Lord Prescott, rose from shifty practitioner of the office knee-trembler to become one of the greatest moralists of the age, certainly a rival for John Major. It remains only for women MPs to be rewarded, or pardoned, for the same enthusiasm, before the parliamentary sex scandal is redefined as the obvious stepping stone between backbencher and junior minister. Though, as David Mellor’s career reminds us, why stop there?

As for any link between continence and competence, Horta-Osório’s record, like Johnson’s, speaks for itself. Give or take a further 3,000 job losses, a fall in profits and a record fine for mishandled PPI claims, Lloyds bank is now in such excellent shape that Horta-Osório’s latest pay deal, including a 6% salary rise, was £8.5m. Having established that Horta-Osório had not claimed any Piatt-related costs of his trip on expenses, Lloyds told the Sun: “In this regard, the review found there were no breaches of the group’s policy and there was no case to answer.” It continued: “Lloyds has been returned to financial health over the last five years under the leadership of António, and is well-placed to continue supporting the UK economy and to help Britain prosper.”

But in another regard, it might have added, António had a little explaining to do. Shortly after his arrival at Lloyds, Horta-Osório introduced a code of personal responsibility, one intrusive enough to satisfy the Sun, and designed to help Lloyds staff to “strive to always do the right thing”. Incentives were included: “We take any non-compliance with the codes very seriously.” I recommend the code’s crystalline “decision guide” to any employee who is contemplating something that might not merely make them look exceptionally silly, but cost them their job.

For instance, a married employee might ask himself/herself: “I would like to meet my girlfriend/boyfriend while on company business in Singapore, then take boat trips together, even though discovery would cause personal and professional agonies and raise unfair questions about my judgment and expenses. What should I do?”

In this instance, the decision guide would lead the troubled employee straight to three questions: “Am I leading by example?”; “Would Lloyds Banking Group be comfortable if my actions were reported externally?” and; “Would I be happy to tell my colleagues, friends and family about my actions?” If, like our fictitious employee, you answered no/not sure to one or more, then the code is clear: “Contact your line manager or a responsible senior leader in your business area for further advice and guidance.”

The glaring omission here is how to proceed if you are already CEO of Lloyds and therefore have no line manager or responsible senior leader with whom to discuss your Singapore trip. In earlier times, Mr Horta-Osório praised his wife’s advice – she recommended he take the Lloyds job – but in this case, that, presumably, was contra-indicated. Perhaps the careless code-writers thought it inconceivable that any leader brilliant enough to help Britain prosper wouldn’t also be enough of a genius not to breach his own regulations by taking an ostensibly adulterous mini-break on the Singaporean harbour front. Such a gigantic talent would be sure to remain, judiciously, indoors. One recalls that even Prescott was exposed only after his diary secretary’s boyfriend went to the Daily Mirror.

It becomes clearer why, in what first resembled some grim, public-appeasing precedent, Mr Horta-Osório felt compelled to issue a staff memo much praised by PRs and trumpeted by the Sun as a “grovelling apology”.

On examination, there is little sign of accountability in Mr Horta-Osório’s effort, which adheres strictly to the “mistakes were made” method of apology, so dear to politicians and bankers, that regrets, preferably in the first person plural, whatever unfortunate circumstances have mysteriously arisen. More than anything it recalls those forced HBOS apologies: “We are profoundly and I think unreservedly sorry at the turn of events.”

In the current case, Mr Horta-Osório says: “I deeply regret being the cause of so much adverse publicity” (ie, being found out); he dwells on the company’s “major accomplishments”; he delicately alludes, as he must, to the code he has transgressed – “the highest professional standards”. From which it is but a short step to shared responsibility. “We must recognise that mistakes will be made. I don’t expect anyone to get everything all the time.”

Quite. It would be ridiculous to think that, in the lower regions of the Lloyds banking group, nobody on a fraction of his £8.5m would impulsively do something, as prohibited by the Antonine Code, that they would be unhappy to tell their colleagues, friends or family about.

Perhaps it is not so unreasonable, however, for Mr Horta-Osório’s co-workers, and even for the public, with its 9% holding, to wonder if someone in such hilarious contravention of his code can be worth the full £8.5m. Can António, the star in his own revival of Measure for Measure, be the right person to lead by example?

Either, as Mr Horta-Osório says, his “personal life is obviously a private matter”, and elements of his code are an outrageous imposition, in which case he’s in the wrong, or his code is defensible and he is in the wrong for non-compliance. “I strongly believe you should link compensation with performance,” he has said. A merciful public might conclude that, if Mr Horta-Osório is not to join the blameless 3,000 staff now earmarked for disposal, he should continue in employment only on a salary that better demonstrates this link, £15,156 per year being both generous to him, and the same as a Lloyds customer service assistant.