A couple of weeks ago, the Spectator ran a cover feature on the number of Australian, Kiwi, South African and Canadian men (and they are invariably men) at the top of the British establishment. Not since the likes of Jan Smuts, Keith Park, Robert Menzies, Lord Beaverbrook and countless others were fighting Nazism, have men from the Dominions been so prominent in British society.
Their ranks have been bolstered this morning by New Zealander Ross McEwan, who is to succeed Stephen Hester and the chief executive of RBS on 1 October. McEwan will be paid £1 million a year, but he has had the good sense to waive his bonus for a while. McEwan has a background in retail banking, which may or may not be significant as more efforts are made to refashion RBS’s business before the sale of publicly owned shares, whenever that day will come.
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