Madam, – Your London correspondent, Mark Hennessy, describes the operating culture of Swedish bank Handelsbanken (World News, April 21st), where managers “only do business with people they know and only lend on projects they have properly investigated”. Furthermore, its branch managers are not supine to the dictat of “head office” but operate in a mature partnership with the mother ship. And such bonuses as are earned are deferred to retirement. What a brilliant idea.
Well, we need Handelsbanken here and fast. It would clean up and in the course of so doing, put our own credit institutions to further shame and thereby create a new culture for Irish lenders to emulate.
Expensive reports written by éminences grisesfrom abroad will not stir the managers of the Irish banks with their feet of clay into changing their ways. What will prod them to recognise that they will eventually need real customers (with hands to shake and eyes to see you with) is competition on our shores from this Swedish bank with a "humanist view". Such a bank will get my vote and those of countless others. – Yours, etc,