Nobody enjoys a caning, least of all the pupil who wants to become head boy. That alone would have made Barclays Capital feel sore about any fine from the Financial Services Authority. For an operation that generated more than £1bn in pre-tax profit for Barclays in the half-year to June 30, a £2.45m hit is trivial. BarCap has promised multiples of that amount to executives joining on multi-year guarantees. But still, the penalty – for failures in transaction reporting over two years to October 2008 – is 16 times larger than the last FSA fine on any bank for comparable breaches of the rules. It must sting.

BarCap says no counterparties, clients or financial reports were harmed in the making of this computer error. It has mended its ways and put in place controls – controls it should probably have implemented in October 2006, when an internal review first indicated flaws. The FSA should also have asked the bank at the time whether it had followed through and dealt with the concerns. But those were the heady days of “if you say so” light-touch regulation.