Sants" gong - parade's end Honour, remarked Cicero, is the reward of virtue. When accorded in the commercial sphere, it should also reflect a job well done. So the sight of any national recognition system handing out an official accolade to a senior regulator who was supervising in the run-up to 2008"s catastrophic financial turmoil should raise eyebrows, at the very least. Sir Hector Sants - knighted in the UK's New Year honours list, released today - was in charge of wholesale and institutional market regulation at the Financial Services Authority from 2004. He was appointed the FSA's chief executive in July 2007. This was the period when City of London grandees, and FSA officials themselves, were singing the praises of "light touch," principles-based regulation. That, they boasted, gave the UK a big competitive advantage; suggestions that quality (of oversight and practices) might be suffering were swept aside. True, Sir Hector's first role did not directly involve retail banking, which is where the UK's biggest lacunae eventually emerged. But he was in the top job when the Royal Bank of Scotland's ill-fated and hubristic ABN Amro merger deal went through. Sir Hector has since argued that he did not have any power to intervene in this. And it is true that he subsequently helped to manage a U-turn at the FSA, as it tried to reinvent itself as a more intrusive regulator post-crisis. He also agreed to stay on at the agency in 2010, after the government announced plans to split its functions, providing continuity. But earthly rewards, in the form of a reported £3m package in his new post as head of compliance at Barclays, have already followed. Knighthoods, by contrast, are meant to be given when peers view a recipient's contribution as "inspirational and significant" over a long period. Four years trying to right the wrongs of a previous decade should not earn entry to Buckingham Palace.