Tightening financial conditions alongside geopolitical tensions and demands for fiscal spending have returned the focus to risk. The typical narrowly focused view of counterparty risk applying to credit or trading transactions has wider applications across most investments.

With central banks facing the prospect of sticky inflation, a messy mix of housing costs and pressure on wages, their pathway via interest rates has inevitable unintended consequences. The obvious candidate has been the banking system. Quite unfairly, banks without anything like the problems facing those in the US or Switzerland have been dragged into the fray.