Sex

It seems that successful men are driven by many demons, that would appear to be the conclusion to be drawn from the public downfalls of Sir Fred "the Shred" Goodwin (ex head of RBS) and Dominique Strausss-Kahn (ex head of the IMF).

Sir Fred had in place, until yesterday, a "super injunction" that forbade the mention of him even being a banker. However, following disclosures made in the House of Lords yesterday about his affair with a senior colleague, the terms of the injunction were varied. Mr Justice Tugendhat, sitting at the High Court, varied the injunction to allow reporting of Sir Fred's name, but not details of the alleged relationship or the name of the colleague said to be involved.

As to why the affair is so important rests not with the affair itself per se, but the fact that RBS has a code of conduct that would have required Sir Fred to tell the board of the affair, lest there be a conflict of interest.

It is not yet clear as to whether he told the board, or whether the affair itself may have distracted him during a critical time in the bank's operations.

The FSA has been asked to investigate. However, given the mess that they have made so far wrt their last investigation (yet to be reported) into the collapse of RBS, any FSA investigation is likely to produce nothing of any value.

In other news, quite by coincidence, the IMF has published its code of conduct (which cover "personal relationships").

Human beings, no matter how successful, all share one common characteristic; we are all very flawed.