The eurozone is not the only crisis that UK plc is facing. The Financial Services Authority report (Labour must take share of blame for RBS collapse, says City watchdog, 13 December) into the near collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008 cited poor management as one of its key flaws. Unfortunately, the UK has a depressing history of bad management which too many organisations refuse to take seriously. Management failings were blamed for the fatalities at Mid Staffordshire hospital, and poor leadership is the frequent culprit for major problems in government and wider business. When only one in five managers in the UK has a management qualification, it is time for businesses to wake up and take this issue seriously. The benefits of a well managed company with engaged staff, strong leadership and a clear sense of direction are invaluable.
Christopher Kinsella
Acting chief executive, Chartered Management Institute

• The FSA's report on RBS makes it clear the bank's chief executive and its board of directors were primarily responsible for its demise. But it also highlights the implicit direction from Ed Balls and Gordon Brown to the FSA to ensure it tread gently regarding investment banking. In a speech at the British Bankers' Association industry dinner of 11 October 2006, Balls highlighted "our decision to establish a single regulator for financial services, replacing the fragmented, overlapping and self-regulatory system we inherited with today's system of increasingly light-touch and risk-based regulation". And we are expected to take this bloke seriously as a possible chancellor?
David Clark
Hungerford, Berkshire