Thank you, UBS. As a member of the UK’s Independent Commission on Banking, under Sir John Vickers, I could not have asked for a better illustration of the unregulatable risks to which investment banks are exposed than Thursday’s announcement of a loss of $2.3bn in “unauthorised trading”. No sane country can allow taxpayers to stand behind such risks.

That is the kernel of the case for ringfencing of retail banking from investment banking, recommended in the ICB’s final report. As John Kay argued on Wednesday: “Only if traditional retail banking is ringfenced can taxpayer guarantees be limited to personal and business depositors, and government funding of the banking system be directed to the needs of the businesses that create jobs and growth. That is the irrefutable case for the Vickers Commission recommendations.”

Needless to say, critics have also condemned the report as irrelevant, damaging, or toothless.