Midland's new direction
THE arrival of Kit McMahon will reward the directors of the Midland Bank for an unusual decision. Earlier this year they made up their minds to look for a chairman who was a banker. The formidable Sir Edward Holden, who by the 1920s had built the Midland into the biggest bank in the world, was a banker and a half. None of his successors has been a banker at all. They have come from public life or from the chairs of big companies, and for most of them the Midland has been a retirement job. In their time the Midland has slid down the table, to fourth place in our own High Street league. Powerful managers the bank has never lacked — it seems to breed them, often in the north of England. Its inconsistencies and misjudgments must be seen as faults of direction. Now the Mid- land has rightly decided (or been prompted to decide) that it needs the highest quality and professionalism at the very top. It will also become the only High Street bank whose chairman has taught economics at Oxford and English to his native Australia. How typical of the old-style Midland, though, to say that Mr McMahon will join next year and become chairman the year after — as though this Rolls-Royce needed 12 months' running in.
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