It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how Peter Sands can survive as chief executive of Standard Chartered.
It is not as if today’s profits warning and the rapid departure of the head of its financial markets division are the first instances of the London-based, historic, emerging-markets bank’s recent ability to shock the stock market.
Standard Chartered shares are today trading exactly where they were in August 2011.
Yet this is a bank which boasted it had no need for a taxpayer bailout during the financial crisis.
Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC and even Royal Bank of Scotland have been far better investments over the same time.
Standard Chartered, once clean and dull, has been exposed as a sanctions buster and money launderer.
Talk remains that Sands and chairman Sir John Peace do not get on as other executives, notably finance director Richard Meddings, have headed for the door.
The sands of time for Sands could be running out.
