12 MARCH 1988, Page 23

Shooting an admiral

WE NOW have a test case for my theory about banks and bankers, which is (rough- ly speaking) that by the time things are seen to have gone wrong, the man who let them go wrong is no longer there to take the blame. If he was senior then, he has retired now. The shake-up at Standard Chartered has displaced the group manag- ing director, Michael McWilliam. It has, though, come too late to displace Lord Barber, who as chairman presided over Standard Chartered for 13 fateful years, and by the end was scarcely visible. Last year he retired. My theory now provides that the faults of inadequate direction may be visited upon luckless managers. John Harris, of the Midland, was another.