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Banks need to have large shareholders on the board that have a direct interest in their performance.

Banks are concerned the central bank is imposing too many regulations. If the trend continues, we'll swing to heavy regulation. We need to have balanced regulation to encourage the economy.

Big banks have long had private equity divisions that put up capital for deals too complex or risky for individual shareholders to finance.

The fundamental problem with banks is what it's always been: they're in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or incredibly sophisticated, is inherently risky.

Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.

You read constantly that banks are lobbying regulators and elected officials as if this is inappropriate. We don't look at it that way.

Banks are there to support businesses that have justifiable needs.

The real problem at the moment is that the banks - because of their existing culture, which is frankly anti-business, obsession with short-term trading profits, not focusing on the long term - are throttling the recovery of British industry.

It is no wonder that bank capital is regulated. When borrowing and lending is profitable, it is tempting for banks to scale up their operations and to borrow and lend too much in relation to their capital, in effect reducing the effectiveness of the potential capital cushion.

Governments of all stripes want to deliver growth and rebalance their economies now that they have learned the hard way that, left to their own devices, markets pick expensive banking losers.