Sants is a risky move for Barclays That Mr Sants has decided to keep himself in the public gaze by taking the job at Barclays deserves some credit but there are still serious questions about the appointment that need to be asked and answered. While Mr Sants was chief executive of the FSA the calamitous takeover of ABN Amro by the Royal Bank of Scotland was agreed, Barclays's controversial "Protium" deal accepted and Lloyds TSB's takeover of HBOS waved through. As the financial ship went down, Mr Sants was in the wheelhouse. When it came to the FSA's own report on the RBS collapse, Mr Sants initially agreed that all the public needed to be told could be contained in a 12-line press release. This showed a peculiarly tin ear to public opinion and the decision was rightly reversed and a full report - critical of the FSA - published. Now, Mr Sants may have perfectly reasonable defences on all of these issues, probably focused on the lack of tools to control errant bankers. He has certainly told those close to him that criticisms of a "revolving door" between regulators and the banks they once regulated are wide of the mark. There needs to be, he argues, crossover to ensure proper expertise on both sides. Mr Sants should take up the offer of an appearance before the Commission on Banking Standards. He can explain, as I am told he already has to Barclays, that he is at the bank to change the operational weight of compliance within the bank. Where compliance officers were once the guys in the basement telling the creators of fancy structured products how far they could push the rules, Mr Sants has made it his business to make it clear that "values" are as important as box ticking. This is a risky appointment for both sides. For Mr Sants, as he has put himself in a position where the first misstep will be seized upon. And for Barclays, where the CEO Antony Jenkins has appointed a man indelibly marked by the financial crisis to tell him how to put the messy farrago to bed. Maybe, oddly, that is the point. Significant changes of direction are not achieved by a safety-first approach. As I have made clear before, the decision by Starbucks to volunteer a new tax agreement with HMRC was wrong-headed both in the planning and the execution. Foreign corporates operating in the UK should be allowed to function within the law without a mob of protesters standing outside their shops demanding that it is their job to set "fair" tax levels rather than the democratically elected government. But what the row has masked is a more fundamental problem for Starbucks - how on earth do they make a profit in the UK? Here, the coffee operation is starting to head in the right direction. Indeed, it was concerns that the tax protests could derail the improvements in the profit and loss account that led to the controversial tax decision. Coffee supply in the UK is a hyper-competitive business that works off thin margins. If customers stop coming, the business model can soon start shipping water. Too expensive real estate bought during times of expansion in 1998 and 2006 have left Starbucks with a rich rent bill. The "wrong shops" are now being closed, with one moving from prime Oxford Street to a new store in a side road, cutting the rent bill by three quarters. Margins are slowly improving. New, more profitable lines of business such as food service direct to offices, vending products and drive-throughs will also help. The business hopes to be in profit in the UK by 2015, which will mean it paying corporation tax because it makes money (the right reason), rather than because it has voluntarily decided to do so. If the UK managing director of Starbucks, Kris Engskov, can achieve that then one hopes that he can put this uncomfortable tax deal behind him.