Now the economy is recovering, is it a good idea to buy Poundland shares?

‘Satan seizes control of saintly bank’ would be a fair summary of much of the coverage of the deal that has rescued the crippled Co-operative Bank from oblivion, or ‘resolution’ as it is technically called. In order to avoid that fate, the parent Co-op Group has had to inject £462 million into the bank while accepting a reduction in its own equity stake to 30 per cent. Dominant among the holders of the other 70 per cent will be a group of hedge funds from New York and Los Angeles who may or may not represent the prince of darkness but are certainly looking for what Co-op Group chief Euan Sutherland calls ‘recovery value’. That means their aim is to get out at a handsome profit as soon as they can, and not to become long-term investors in the Co-op model of banking biodiversity for which many of us once had high hopes.

Fifty of Co-op’s 324 branches have already been targeted for closure, with the loss of 1,000 jobs. The challenge now is to persuade its 4.7 million account-holders not to depart — and much has been made of the preservation of the ‘ethical’ policies that, along with the mutual ownership of the parent group, attracted many of those customers to join in the first place.

Mutuality will henceforth be a rather small rock at the bottom of the tank full of sharks this story has become. But Sutherland says he can keep a lock on the bank’s ethics because they are enshrined in its memorandum and articles (which can’t be changed without the Co-op shareholders’ agreement) and will be overseen by independent directors — so it’s worth asking what those ethics are, and how much good they have done.