Bankers have become the whipping boys of the recession. To my mind, this will have a number of positive outcomes. For a start, less of the world's talent will be diverted to careers in investment banking. Think what the outstanding talents of the past decade might have achieved if they had been employed on more worthy tasks than highly leveraged mergers and acquisitions, or the pursuit of (often illusory) absolute returns.

Another positive outcome is that the basic banking that had hitherto been labelled as “boring” is becoming fashionable again. Hurrah! As I have said before, boring is the new exciting, in banking at least. A year ago, I set my sights on refinancing my business with a bank that did not rely on the wholesale markets for its funding and became a customer of Henry Angest, who bills himself as “a boring Swiss”, for reasons including the fact that he only lends out half his deposits. (Readers, please note: this is an English bank, Arbuthnot, with a Swiss proprietor. I have not yet amassed enough wealth to need a Swiss bank, and by the time I do, there will probably be no benefit in having an offshore account.)

I would prefer to label Angest “cautious” rather than “boring”, and he is not alone. While I was doing something very un-boring recently (attending the Cheltenham Gold Cup), I met another cautious banker. It is worth mentioning that I had to venture out of my host's box (in which everyone but me seemed either to be called Orlando or to have a stately home) and drop into another one to meet him. And when I did, I was pleased I had – I am much more comfortable discussing basis points than horseflesh, though this might condemn me as boring in some people's eyes. So my new nominee for “cautious banker” is Roger Weatherby, chief executive of Weatherbys Private Bank. Like Angest, he only lends out half his deposits. Unlike Angest, he is British born and bred.