Lawsky's Law

Continuing on from my previous blog on HSBC and laundry, there can be no greater banana skin for a leader than a Young Turk, astute, self serving, politically aware and predatory, who has no regard or recognition for the consequences of their actions. Such dangerous, ravenous beasts appear out from the long grass when you least expect, both internal and external to the organisation, spurred into action by perceptions of an easy kill. It will be an interesting battle, Lawsky vs Sands (chief executive of Standard Chartered). There can be little doubt now in the minds of those with a bit of knowse that there is heavy duty political momentum at the most senior levels from the eastern seaboard of USA to knock the City off its perch and get some business back to Wall Street, lost during the collapse of its banking sector. Whether the Wall Street sheriff is a maverick or has been cajoled forward by those who prefer to work from the shadows remains to be seen.  Unlike HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, whose leadership decided to say mea culpa, admit to more than they think they are culpable, cough up and get on with sorting out more urgent and survival threatening  problems, Standard Chartered would be wounded seriously but not mortally by losing its banking licence to transact in New York. Standard Chartered is therefore a strange choice for the sheriff since it has provided the City with an institution for the City and its political and other friends to rally around. By all accounts the USA regulators intend, by the time they have finished, to hammer banks in many of the competing global financial centres, London, Frankfurt, Zurich amongst others, whilst merely slapping the wrists of banks such as Wachovia and Goldman Sachs & Co., who arguably have perpetrated much more serious infringements of the type of which non-American banks are accused. Benjamin may well be a stalking horse sent forward by the men in grey to assess the likely response to their plans to level the playing field, in favour of the American financial sector. As with organisations, so with empires, power is transient and historically has diminished and evaporated in the face of ad hoc coalitions of blocs who feel threatened by those who consider themselves invincible.     

Leaders within HSBC and Standard Chartered in particular have had to deal with predators, both individuals and political groupings, over the last century or so, particularly in the maelstroms which have been the Far and Middle East and South America. Methinks this is a banana skin which might just be mobile and the sheriff should periodically look down rather than keep his gaze on the stars.