Any other business | 8 January 2011

A knighthood for the last banker who put his shareholders’ interests first

The New Year honours list is always a vivid indicator of the times just gone by. No brand better encapsulated the feelgood consumer frenzy of the last decade than Lush, the purveyor of organic soaps and Fairtrade lotions alongside campaigns to save sharks and rainforests, whose name has (perhaps coincidentally, but it can’t have done sales any harm) become slang for something luxurious and desirable. Lush’s founding couple, Mark and Mo Constantine, collect an OBE apiece. As for the dark side of the last decade, the financial services sector, which accounts for almost 10 per cent of the British economy, is recognised by one modest medal — an OBE for Adrian Coles, director-general of the much diminished Building Societies Association, so many of whose former members took the demutualisation route to perdition. That award is matched by another OBE for a man who must nowadays count as one of Britain’s busiest magicians, Andrew Duffell, chief dealer of HM Treasury’s Debt Management office.