It was never going to be an easy ride for the chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Philip Hampton, on the Today Programme this morning. His interview with Evan Davies comes at the end of a week which saw the stripping of the knighthood from former RBS CEO Fred Goodwin's knighthood and the surrender of his £980,000 share bonus by the current CEO, Stephen Hester.
Hampton, a highly experienced businessman, was well prepared for a barrage of politely asked but very negative questions. He came across as a calm and reassuring figure (just the kind of person we need in charge of a bank these days!). He had clear messages woven into an engaging narrative about the need to trust Hester so the the British taxpayer gets repaid.
"The end point is to get it commercially successful, fully profitable again, absolutely safe and sound and back onto public markets. And that is very much in the interests of the British taxpayer. Every penny on the shareprice is £900m [to the taxpayer]."
It would have been an outstanding performance if he had used more personal pronouns "we, you, us" and had articulated his key message at the start of the interview and then reinforced it throughout but let us not quibble. A difficult interview handled very well. It's well worth a listen:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9692000/9692670.stm
Andrew Caesar-Gordon
