Big banks still have a problem with ethics and morality

The biggest compliment you can get in the City is 'professional'. It means you do not let emotions get in the way of work, let alone morals

Amid all the misunderstandings about global finance, the idea that bankers are a bunch of coke-snorting evildoers on the model of Gordon Gekko or the Wolf of Wall Street is probably the most widespread. It is also largely wrong. Worse: this stereotype stops us from seeing the real issue in finance and the publicly listed corporate world generally.

When interviewing around 200 bankers and banking staff about finance and morality in the City of London for the Guardian, I was struck by the language they used. Not so much the profanities, though there were many, nor the technical stuff and the three-letter acronyms (TLAs). Most striking were terms that seemed designed to sidestep any possibility of an ethical discussion. When talking of their bank's use of loopholes in the tax code to help big corporations and rich families evade taxes, bankers used words such as "tax optimisation" or "tax-efficient structures".

Related: Michael Lewis: the scourge of Wall Street

In most conversations the word 'ethic' came up only in combination with 'work'

Related: Why working fewer hours would make us more productive