Splashing out
AS THE banks and insurers eye one anoth- er greedily, Sir Angus Grossart eyes them askance. 'Vast impersonal conglomerations are created in the financial sector' — so he tells his shareholders and customers at Noble Grossart, the Edinburgh merchant bank — 'to try to hold together diverse tal- ents and businesses. Those concerned per- suade themselves, if few others, that these structures were intended to benefit their customers and improve service. Isn't it small wonder that costs escalate, structures, people and priorities are constantly being reshuffled, all to be cured by the ultimate placebo of rationalisation?' Nobody asks the customers, he says. As Sibley's Law teaches us, giving spending money to a bank is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk. You know what will become of it but you can't tell which wall he will choose.
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