Why a British challenger bank got into trouble

John Maynard KeynesFCA, a British economist, once joked that a sound banker was not one who managed to succeed in an unconventional manner, but one who failed when pursuing the same strategy as everyone else. At least that way no one could really blame him. Metro Bank, a high-street bank, has just come perilously close to the unsoundest thing of all—failing while doing something different.Metro launched to great fanfare in 2010, branding itself as Britain’s first new high-street lender in over 150 years. It listed on the stock exchange in 2016. Investors have had a torrid time since; the share price is down by 98%. An in 2019 revealed that the bank had been applying incorrect risk weightings to some of its assets. The Financial Conduct Authority (), a regulator, concluded that its management at the time had knowingly misled investors, and fined both the bank and its bosses. But the problems at Metro run deeper than historical accounting.