The financial crisis has generated a long list of people and institutions to be blamed: from Andrew Cuomo, attorney-general of New York state, to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve; from credit rating agencies to credit card companies; from AIG, the insurance giant, to CDOs. More recently, the accountability klieg lights have illuminated the boardrooms of the City of London and Wall Street.

Part-time non-executive directors must also share some of the blame, say the critics, since they often sit on several boards and cannot spend sufficient time understanding each of the companies’ risks. If only directors were focused on the detailed business of just one board, the argument goes, we might avoid another crisis. This line of thinking takes no account of the executive talent that would be driven from boardrooms, the risk to the independence of the full-time director and the lack of diversity that would result.