It is a cold, hard, and yes unfair fact of life that Alison Rose will be remembered for the chaotic manner of her departure from NatWest rather than the many achievements over her long, trail-blazing career at the bank.
She will never have to worry about paying the gas bill, but it is a tough and bruising reality nonetheless. Her exit means that only one of the last four chief executives at NatWest, or its predecessor Royal Bank of Scotland, have left on their own terms.
Fred “the Shred” Goodwin stood down as part of the terms of the Government rescue of RBS — and was later stripped of his knighthood. His successor Stephen Hester quit in 2013 after then Chancellor George Osborne grew tired of endless rows over bonus payments.
Only the lower-profile New Zealander Ross McEwan stayed the course and went at a time of his own choosing.
It is always going to be a tough gig running a household name consumer brand with the Government sitting on your shareholder register as your biggest single investor.
You have to play the politics well. And unfortunately Alison Rose played the politics badly. In a “normal” fully private business she might just have survived.
But once Downing Street made its extreme displeasure known last night her fate was sealed.
It is 15 years now since Gordon Brown was forced to step into to stop RBS collapsing and taking the entire British financial system down with it. Perhaps, if something good emerges from this messy episode, it will be a fresh realisation that the NatWest soap opera cannot go on
It is time for the great brains at the Treasury to put their heads together and speed up the plan to return the bank to full private ownership. When it comes to banking, politics and business simply do not sit comfortably together.
