The reaction to Andy Hornby’s appointment as chief executive of Alliance Boots was predictably hostile.
Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said that the healthcare group should “have learnt the lessons of HBOS’s collapse under Mr Hornby”.
Well, perhaps. But Mr Hornby has been far more contrite and far more willing to accept criticism for his running of HBOS than, say, Sir Fred Goodwin at RBS. Neither was the collapse of HBOS entirely Mr Hornby’s fault, although he rightly accepts reponsibility.
Having invested all his bonuses in HBOS shares, Mr Hornby suffered personally from the bank’s collapse more than most, while at 42 with a young family he is not in a position to retire.
Some observers would, apparently, have Mr Hornby in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of his days. Such an attitude is all too common in Britain, with our urge to lop off tall poppies and to punish failure. It is a very different story in the United States, where it is far easier to relaunch a business or a business career after presiding over company failures.
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The US attitude has many attractions, not least that it would prevent the waste of talent that is likely to result from legions of ex-bankers being consigned to the scrap heap. After all, it is not as if Britain’s boardrooms are so overflowing with talent that executives with experience such as Mr Hornby’s — particularly, perhaps, his experience at HBOS — can easily be ignored.
That said, it is perhaps asking a bit much for anyone to offer Sir Fred a boardroom berth in the near future.