Governments around the world will have looked on jealously last week as Switzerland secured a profitable SFr7.2bn ($6.8bn) divestment of its stake in UBS.

But if other countries see that deal as the waymarker for a broader sell-off of states’ bank shareholdings, they might well be setting themselves up for disappointment. Apart from the fact that most other countries are still sitting on losses, the stakes that Washington, London and Berlin took in their banks were far bigger.