Goldman Sachs publicly pooh-poohs the idea but thoughts are turning to who will succeed Lloyd Blankfein as its chief executive. The bank, which this week reported a 7 per cent fall in first-quarter revenues, is in sound enough shape despite its reputational pasting that he can respectably cede control within a year or two.

His successor could be Gary Cohn, its president, one of the two other candidates mentioned in a New York Times article this week, or someone else. There seems no doubt, however, that it will be a single person and that Goldman has abandoned its previous practice of power-sharing at the top. Goldman, which used to be a partnership all the way up, has become, like most other public companies, a monarchy.

That is a shame, even if it seems hopelessly idealistic to expect chief executives of public companies to share power with someone else. They talk a good game about the importance of teamwork and co-operation but they ask employees to do as they say, not as they do.