Chris Blackhurst: Why bankers will be smiling about the VW emissions scandal

If I were a banker today, I’d be smiling. In fact, I’d have the biggest grin my round face would permit.

After enduring years of abuse because of the bad behaviour of some in my industry, I could finally point at someone else.

Not only that, I’d be doing so in the direction of the mighty, holier-than-thou Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest company.

The carmaker’s admission it cheated on US emission tests is motoring’s Libor — it displays the same degree of calculation and cynicism as the rigging of that rate.

And it has produced the same level of shock. Libor is a figure that affects us all because the prices we pay are calculated from it; this scandal also affects our collective well-being as it concerns climate change and the future of the planet.

Except, I suspect, it’s far, far worse. This wasn’t a bunch of traders having a laugh at the expense of the rest of us and making a few bob.

This was someone taking a deliberate decision to insert “defeat devices” (yes, they’ve even got a name) to bypass environmental standards.

Against that, the bleating of VW’s US chief Michael Horn that “we have totally screwed up” is pathetically lacking.

Likewise, the comment from German vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel that it’s a “bad episode” for the car industry totally understates the manipulation, connivance and disregard for fellow man involved.

It’s a fraud on the public that may not stop in America or with VW. The German giant exports only 3.2% of its cars to the US.

It seems perverse it should go to such lengths to deceive the authorities over a small proportion, relatively, of its business.

China accounts for 40% of its exports, and logic would suggest Chinese testers have been similarly duped.

Already, the talk is of VW facing $18 billion ($11.6 billion) in fines and warranty costs, not to mention possible criminal charges and class-action lawsuits. And that does not take into consideration the damage to the company’s reputation.

You can only step back from the wreckage and ask what were they thinking of?

The chances of being caught, at some stage, were always high. But it goes back to something that has sustained my entire career observing corporations and their rise and fall: there is no accounting for human behaviour.

Humans build businesses and humans destroy them. It’s the seven deadly sins of greed, gluttony, lust, envy, sloth, wrath and pride, which time and again do their worst.

Titans can assemble at gatherings like Davos, telling each other how virtuous they are and patting themselves on the back.

They can send their high-fliers to business schools such as Harvard and Wharton to garnish their names with initials. They can devour earnest books with titles like Who Moved My Cheese? or The Tipping Point. They can embark on multi-million-pound CSR programmes, producing glossy brochures and employing silky smooth public relations advisers to spread the word.

And none of it makes any difference as humans conspire to do what humans have always done.

It’s as if, at VW, whoever fitted the cheat devices (surely a more apposite title) had never seen what occurred elsewhere, did not witness the fallouts from the great shenanigans of the past, failed to realise what fate lay in store for them and their company if they were discovered. Which can only mean that yet again, hubris was to blame.