³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Who would have thought there could be so much interest from a Paisley lawyer-turned-banker being questioned by a Dumbarton teacher-turned-MP?

But this was less about Sir Fred Goodwin or John McFall. After three hours of hearings at the Commons finance select committee, it has been the ex-chairman and ex-chief executive of Halifax Bank of Scotland who have had the worst of it.

This is not quite what was expected.

It was Goodwin who was seen as public enemy number one in leading the Royal Bank of Scotland into disaster.

Having acquired and grown his American subsidiaries into the country's sixth biggest banking presence, two reputable American publications have named him as "the world's worst banker".

But he has probably given as good an account of himself as anyone could - at least anyone having just pitched his company and the country into tens of billions of pounds of trouble.

Partly that was through conceding, with his former chairman Sir Tom McKillop, that the ABN Amro purchase was "a big mistake" - and one that had the backing of the bank and shareholders.

Of the four, Sir Fred came across as the most reflective and thoughtful about what had gone wrong, while Sir Tom continued to look like a rabbit that not only got caught in the headlights, but run over several times.

The duo from HBOS were not so willing to go for the abject option, and Andy Hornby was keen to stress that he'd only been in charge for two years.

His predecessor, James Crosby, had been in post while the key strategic mistakes were being made.

Hornby and former HBOS chairman Lord Stevenson, faced prolonged questions about the evidence from John Moore, a former HBOS head of risk, who was sacked four years ago after he had persistently raised concerns that the bank was growing too fast without adequate attention to risk.

They were determined not to concede that Moore had got it right and they had got it wrong.

That was cleared up, with a nine-month inquiry alongside the Financial Services Authority, insisted Stevenson.

Indeed, although we heard apologies, the blame was being shared with the FSA, with credit ratings agencies, and above all with the markets which, we were told, turned on RBS in the space of only a few weeks after the Lehman Brothers collapse last September.

No-one saw things could turn on the Royal Bank so fast.

It's less easy for McFall and his select committee to call these markets to account. But they did ask a short, but telling, series of questions about relations with institutional investors, finding that until very late on, their only concern was to maximise returns rather than the capital base, liquidity or risk.

As some of these are the people in charge of managing Joe Public's pension funds, there may be some interesting exchanges to be had if MPs turn their attentions in that direction.