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Green's departure means HSBC can finally enter the 21st century

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The departure of HSBC Holdings chairman Stephen Green to a job with the British government offers the banking giant a perfect opportunity to drag its antiquated governance structure kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

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It is now 18 years since the Cadbury Report on corporate governance called on British companies to appoint non-executive chairmen. The idea was that a company's chairman should stand back from day-to-day management and instead focus on overseeing the board and protecting the interests of shareholders.

Following a string of corporate scandals on both sides of the Atlantic, these days Cadbury's recommendations are widely accepted around the world as best practice.

But change has been slow to penetrate HSBC's boardroom. Traditionally, the chairman's office has been all-powerful, occupied by men of the stamp of Michael Sandberg, responsible for the bank's landmark building in Hong Kong, and Willie Purves, who shifted HSBC's headquarters to London in the early 1990s when he bought Britain's ailing Midland Bank.

Today, alone among major British-based companies, the banking giant's chairman retains an executive role.

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In the past few years, that role has increasingly been seen as anachronistic, and has become a lightning rod for criticism from aggrieved shareholders.

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