COMPANIES Peter Sands displays no pretensions. He sports a Swatch while others wear a Patek Philippe. He has a weekend retreat in the rainy Welsh Brecon Beacons while others jet off to Bali or the Bahamas. And the bank he heads, the London-listed, Asia-focused Standard Chartered, is not ostentatious about its outperformance of many rivals, with a return on equity of 17 per cent in the first half of the year.
Yet Mr Sands is concerned, angry even – albeit in his understated way – about what he regards as the reactionary atmosphere sweeping through financial services. He is convinced that the economic crisis is far from over and he is cross that politicians have pinned the blame for it squarely on the banks, without acknowledging that there remain vast macro-economic problems.
