Any other business | 8 January 2011

A knighthood for the last banker who put his shareholders’ interests first

The New Year honours list is always a vivid indicator of the times just gone by. No brand better encapsulated the feelgood consumer frenzy of the last decade than Lush, the purveyor of organic soaps and Fairtrade lotions alongside campaigns to save sharks and rainforests, whose name has (perhaps coincidentally, but it can’t have done sales any harm) become slang for something luxurious and desirable. Lush’s founding couple, Mark and Mo Constantine, collect an OBE apiece. As for the dark side of the last decade, the financial services sector, which accounts for almost 10 per cent of the British economy, is recognised by one modest medal — an OBE for Adrian Coles, director-general of the much diminished Building Societies Association, so many of whose former members took the demutualisation route to perdition. That award is matched by another OBE for a man who must nowadays count as one of Britain’s busiest magicians, Andrew Duffell, chief dealer of HM Treasury’s Debt Management office.

There was one banker on the list too, but since he retired from the City in 2003 he is evidently no longer regarded as a danger to the public. Sir Peter Ellwood, as he becomes, was chief executive of Lloyds during its sensible era, and bequeathed what Neil Collins once labelled here ‘the Ellwood Memorial Dividend’ — a handsome annual payout to shareholders that lasted until the catastrophic HBOS rescue merger in 2008 and now stands in investors’ memories as a sad reminder of what it was like to own a piece of a bank that got its priorities right.

It’s a bit of a mystery why Ellwood should be knighted for ‘services to business and the public sector’.