Antony Jenkins’ efforts to change the culture of Barclays by cutting bankers’ pay? explain are on hold. At its investment bank, it is paying bonuses that are 13 per cent higher to “compete in the global market for talent”. The bank’s chief executive wants to reform the pay of US and Asian investment bankers but it is beyond his control.

His problem – shared with the rest of an industry struggling to alter itsits behaviour – is that there is no such thing as a banker. There are equity brokers, foreign exchange traders, mortgage salespeople, corporate financiers and all kinds of specialists under one roof. butThere is no single set of employees unified by a professional culture and a willingness to pull together.

That spells trouble for banks such as Barclays or Deutsche Bank as they try to introduce “The Barclays Way” or Deutsche’s six new corporate values (“integrity”, “innovation”, “discipline” etc). Banks that werebanged together in a 20-year spree of mergers and leveraged risk-taking, while old skills were replaced by computers, have little culture left from which to rebuild.