Ever since his downfall and the resulting political firestorm cast him as ‘arch villain’ in the world’s biggest banking failure (so far), the erstwhile ‘Sir’ and now just plain old Fred Goodwin has never given a media interview. It could initially have been for legal reasons, but I wonder if maintaining a dignified silence was ever the right approach and if he should now review that? Was it a deliberate, planned and considered action or an early mistake that he’s since compounded by failing to tell his version of events?

It really is fascinating and puzzling to watch this former business ‘superstar’ making no apparent attempt to defend his reputation. Did he make no senior media allies throughout his career? Why didn’t he take the well-trodden advocacy approach of speaking through ‘friends’ or other ‘sources close to the subject’ to get his defensive messages out there?

If his position in considered indefensible, then why not hand back the pension pot with a humble ‘mea-culpa’, and start to redeem himself? He wouldn’t miss the money. RBS’s current boss Stephen Hester found temporary reprieve from personal criticism by doing a u-turn on his controversial bonus award: change the story if you don’t like it!

Another possibility is that Fred Goodwin simply doesn’t give a damn. That seems unlikely from all that we’ve read about him and his allegedly Hindenburg-sized ego. Redemption is clearly possible although it takes a long time, much effort and genuine will: the old adage about reputations taking years to build and seconds to destroy still holds.

But the point here is that reputations can be rebuilt. There are plenty of examples of people who’ve recovered from worse than Goodwin; does anyone remember Gerald Ronson? Look at his Wikipedia page to see how far you can sink and how high you can subsequently rebound. A more recent example is ex-BP boss Tony Hayward. He seems to have done all right so far, and in a relatively short space of time. And so has the reputation of Toyota, following the crisis surrounding its global recall. It will be interesting to see if and how Fred Goodwin finally reinvents himself. Maybe he’s working on a book deal?

In the UK, high street (retail) banking is dominated by a handful of five, big brands so similar you’d be hard pushed to fit a cigarette paper between them. So news of Metro bank’s launch, which The Telegraph newspaper points out is the first new entrant to this market in 100 years, ought to be welcomed, didn’t it? Especially when you hear its billionaire founder Vernon Hill likes to have fun and plans to “to eliminate every stupid bank rule we can find.”

How refreshing. Well, on the surface, yes. Any new-comer promising to shake things up and put customers (and their dogs) first has to be welcomed, if only to keep the stuffy old established banks on their toes. But then I came across this CNN story about Vernon Hill.

The photo is enough to have you running from the room screaming, Edvard Munch-style, but the line that did it for me was “Duffy dines on caviar and filet mignon!” I showed this to a couple of people and one of them said “he’s not getting his hands on my money.” Quite.

Coming soon to London: the dog-friendly bank we’ve all been waiting for. Photo courtesy Photos8

Chances are, the existing banks are so dozy, Metro will succeed all the same. But Hill has some pretty stiff and equally disruptive competition arriving soon in the shape of Tesco and Virgin. Personally, I’m not so sure Metro’s ‘open all hours’ strategy is the right one for UK retail banking, but, being an early and willing convert to internet banking, perhaps I’m not the type of customer he’s after. In my book, the only sensible motive for walking into a bank has to be robbery.

Postscript: shortly after writing this I came across this superb, prescient Harvard Business Review blog The Case for Being Disruptively Good by Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab.