Even by the rough-and-tumble standards of the City - London's financial district - Bank of Scotland chief executive Peter Burt's attack was shocking for its overt hostility.
Back in September 1999, in the opening shot of one of the biggest hostile takeover bids that Britain had seen, Mr Burt laid into the senior management at much bigger rival National Westminster Bank (NatWest).
'NatWest is consistently disappointing, we intend to reverse that. They have gone into all sorts of ventures and then come out having lost money,' Mr Burt said. Days later, he added that his target's 'shareholders will not be hoodwinked by the illusion of change'.
Although Mr Burt's verbal broadside in an ultimately failed bid was stronger than some that had gone before it, such attacks are part and parcel of corporate warfare in Western economies.
This week's public apology from Singapore's largest lender DBS to two rivals bound up in a contested bid may show that similar exercises in the city-state have to be executed in a tamer fashion.
DBS paid United Overseas Bank (UOB) and Overseas Union Bank (OUB) S$1 million (about HK$4.32 million) apiece and publicly retracted a host of comments prepared by its adviser, Goldman Sachs, during the battle to take over OUB, Singapore's fourth-largest bank.
The remarks cast doubt on the professional integrity of the UOB board and highlighted both banks' family-controlled management structures.