Another week and another set of results, this time from the pariah of business, the banking sector.

On the face of it the results are rosy. All the big banks have returned billion plus results for the first half of the year, with the Royal Bank of Scotland delivering a massive return to profit following the biggest fall from grace of the UK’s top four.
In many ways, the news that RBS, 80% owned by the taxpayer remember, is back in profit is no doubt a good thing, but the prospect of vilified bankers awaiting their share of the spoils through large bonuses remains no less edifying. As Robert Peston blogs today, given the scale of the profits and the benefits which will be reaped through the infamous Asset Protection Scheme (in other words the lifeline provided by the government), the public sector is set to do rather well out of its investment.

Hard as we might celebrate this news, the fact remains there was a dreadful failure of corporate governance which led to RBS (headed by the infamous Sir Fred Goodwin) and the other banks collapsing. Interesting then that this week the Financial Reporting Council issued new guidance on the effectiveness of boards and the role of the chairman.

As those of you who follow my blog will know, I’ve been writing on this a while. But I passionately believe that the crisis was borne, in part, from a failure of effective, high quality decision making. Anthony Hilton, one of the shrewdest financial commentators, said this week that "so many board decisions fail this basic test and result in massive destruction of shareholder value".

Take the example of Sir John Bond who, as Chairman of Vodafone, has come under intense criticism for his handling of a number of issues during his tenure, including the write-off of £2.3bn, 25% of the purchase price of a mobile phone company India Vodafone bought three years ago. A Hilton wrote “Entrepreneurs such as Sir Richard Branson spend their life building up businesses and making a mark – but they rarely, if ever, create an empire which is worth anything like as much the value so casually lost by Vodafone on this one deal”. And it’s not lost on me that this was the same man who, in 2002 as Chairman of HSBC, bought the US subprime lender Household for £9bn.

The example of Sir John Bond is unfair in large part. Remember, HSBC was one of the banks which had relatively low exposure to subprime lending and has been largely applauded for demonstrating robust decision governance in the run up to the credit crisis. But the wider point remains. Is Sir John the best man to chair a telecoms business after a career in banking? Was Sir Tom McKillop, recognised as an excellent CEO of AstraZeneca, the best candidate to chair RBS and oversee its near disastrous takeover of ABN Amro?

The FRC has also announced this week the launch of a project to examine the lessons to be learned from the credit crisis and other market developments as they impact corporate reporting, accounting and auditing of non-financial services companies. My bet is that there’s going to be some pretty damning conclusions drawn on how the boards of banks acted and behaved. We wait and see. Let’s just hope that the boards of today’s RBS and other banks are truly learning from the mistakes of their predecessors.