A former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland once described his approach to banking as “having very deep pockets but very short arms”. He may have overestimated the depth of his pockets and the length of his arms, but in the past few weeks RBS and HSBC – another bank with Scottish roots – have both shown that they are still applying this approach when it comes to what they pay their bankers.

When HSBC announced its results last week, some of the details on pay made for good headlines. Its five highest-paid executives collectively made nearly $53m last year. The top five on the management board earned $19m between them. And 186 senior staff in London earned an average of $1.2m.