Last week, Stuart Gulliver was telling associates that if he was passed over as head of HSBC he could well move back to his beloved Hong Kong, his home in the mid-1990s, to start a hedge fund. Now he will not have to. Following an emergency board meeting yesterday and accelerated approval by regulators at the Financial Services Authority, Mr Gulliver was last night confirmed as the next chief executive – marking the second elevation of an investment banker to the helm of a British bank in as many weeks.

But if Barclays’ incoming chief executive Bob Diamond – or Diamond Bob, as the FT’s Lex column has christened him – is the apotheosis of the hard-charging, highly paid investment banker, Mr Gulliver is the antithesis. He grew up in the southern UK city of Plymouth, not Massachusetts. He went to an unexceptional state school, not a fancy private one. And though, through a starlit time at Oxford, he came away with a degree in jurisprudence, a half-blue in boxing and then moved swiftly into a lucrative investment banking job with HSBC, he has remained refreshingly down-to-earth. Few investment bankers would stand around chatting to all-comers as he does at functions and parties.

Rivals are unusually generous in their praise, with two describing him as “visionary”. One is particularly gushing. “He’s a truly remarkable man, an exceptional banker. His is the most exciting appointment since Jamie Dimon was made head of JPMorgan.”