But then the stock market crisis was widely perceived as having been caused by a technical strategy called program trading, and again there was no huge banking crisis or loss of confidence.

It retained responsibility for overall financial stability-partly as a SOP to its then-governor, Eddie George, who viewed the loss of banking supervision as a slight.

Shares in UBS fell yesterday after the Swiss bank revealed a bigger-than-expected loss in the third-quarter as its private banking operations continued to haemorrhage funds.