This is another of the sessions that I did on banking at the Library of Mistakes’ inaugural Weekend of Mistakes at Hay Castle, Hay-on-Wye, on Sunday 2 March 2024.
The event was titled “The Complex Ethics of Banking” and I appeared alongside two other chroniclers of banking catastrophes, Jared Bibler, author of Iceland’s Secret: The Untold Story of The World’s Biggest Con and Philip Augar, author of The Bank That Lived A Little: Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market.
The event was ably chaired by Ray Perman, author of Hubris: How HBOS Wrecked The Best Bank in Britain, who attempted to steer us and my two fellow panelists into the positive territory of thinking about what an ethical bank should look like. I started out by raising Handelsbanken and Triodos, with a focus on incentives.
Thanks to the festival’s organisers and hosts, Russell Napier, Paul Greathbatch, Tom True, Alice Sherwood, Lyndy Cooke, Mari Fforde, the Library of Mistakes, Hay Castle, and King’s College, London.
The Weekend of Mistakes in an annual event held in Hay Castle, Hay-on-Wye, providing a deep dive into financial and economic history — and the lessons they hold for us today. The next festival will be held on 20-22 March 2026 .