Humble pie is not usually part of Sir Fred Goodwin’s diet, which may be why the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland left his chairman, Sir Tom McKillop, to eat most of it during Tuesday’s presentations about the group’s record rights issue.

The issue of £12bn of new shares is humiliating for Sir Fred, coming less than two months after he told analysts that the bank had no plans for any capital raising. But for shareholders – who, remember, gave their full support to last year’s purchase of ABN Amro, which helped put RBS in this pickle – a rights issue must be preferable to a placement of new shares with selected investors.