Which behaved worse: callous Thomas Cook or cynical Barclays?

Which is worse, morally and reputationally — to be Thomas Cook, shamed by its refusal to show proper human concern, for fear of being taken to admit responsibility, over the death of two children by carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty boiler while on holiday in Corfu; or to be Barclays, fined almost $2.4 billion (heading a list of banks fined more than $9 billion between them for similar offences) for conspiring to manipulate the foreign exchange market over a five-year period? Ethicists could agonise over that one for weeks.

But in terms of customer response, it’s clear that the travel agent — whose mistake was not to reject legal advice that made it look so callous — will suffer more long-term damage than the bank, whose reputation for cynical rule-bending was already both well established and commonplace in its sector: Barclays shares perked up 3 per cent on news of the fines, the market presumably hoping that the Augean stable is now definitively clean.