When Financial News first profiled John Hourican, just after he had been made chief executive of global banking and markets at Royal Bank of Scotland three years ago, we described him as the most senior investment banker you had probably never heard of. To illustrate the point, we did a search of all the newspaper articles in which he had ever been mentioned. They totalled just 54.

Three years on and that number has grown somewhat. Much ink and many column inches have been expended on the Irishman or, more accurately, his pay-packet. Such is the additional scrutiny afforded to the most senior investment banker working for a bank which is 82%-owned by taxpayers that, in some ways, Hourican has become public property too.