More evidence that HSBC is now too big to regulate

THERE'S nothing necessarily illegal about setting up a company in Panama into which you channel your bonus payments. There's similarly nothing inherently dubious about living in Hong Kong, having Hong Kong citizenship, and opening a Swiss bank account to store some of your wealth. But when you're the chief executive of a British bank embroiled in a scandal about helping customers dodge taxes by hiding money in the bank's Swiss private wealth unit, it sure looks bad.

HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver oversees Europe's biggest bank by market value, a global behemoth that's celebrating its 150th birthday this year. There was not much cause for celebration in the bank's results published on Monday, however, or in the various wrongdoings regulators around the world have found it guilty of. And the timing of the latest revelations about Mr Gulliver's personal banking arrangements comes at a tricky time; the bank's chairman Douglas Flint has been summoned by members of the UK Parliament to testify to the Treasury Select Committee on Wednesday about his time as finance director.

On Monday, the Guardian newspaper reported Mr Gulliver's Panama connection via a company called Worcester Equities, and that in 2007 he had US$7.6 million in a Swiss account he set up in 1998.