Mr. John Collison:

I do not believe we would have done anything differently in relation to the actual sales process, how that was run and how it was managed because we were given a set of instructions. We operationalised the board's decision. The board made the decision to sell this portfolio at a minimum reserve price of £1.3 billion in a time-bound, focused and confidential manner, and we executed that. I think the process that was run was appropriate and I think Lazard, which I gather may be appearing before the committee, will confirm that. I believe it was appropriate.

If we put it into context, there were only a limited number of investors that operated at this altitude. We were asking them, in dollar terms, to write a cheque in excess of $2-$2.2 billion. There are only a handful of firms worldwide that can do that. We instructed Lazard to find these firms. We were satisfied it did that and that it would run that process in a short time-bound manner with the information we felt was appropriate for it to evaluate and make its bid.

I think, and this goes back to a point that our Chairman made on 29 September, that our record-keeping - this is probably why the committee has so many queries - probably should have been a bit more comprehensive, and I would accept that. We try to learn, evolve and improve our processes, but that is one area where we probably would need to sharpen up. The board minutes are recorded in a certain way. They record the decision. I do not think there was any criticism of the way the board minutes were recorded prior to now, but I would accept that record-keeping could have been better.