Despite Stephen Hester's efforts, his successor will still face some tough times For a start, any new chief executive will want to know that their pay will not see them become the type of national figure of hate that Mr Hester became at points during his tenure. This will require George Osborne and the Treasury to offer some pretty binding commitments to the successor, to the effect that he or she has their backing whatever political heat comes along. Internally there are a couple of potential candidates who could step up to the role but it would seem most likely that the next boss will come from outside the bank and probably from outside the UK. Across the world there is now a generation of banking leaders who have led their institutions through the financial crisis and its aftermath. As with the Bank of England's appointment of Canadian central bank governor Mark Carney to replace Sir Mervyn King, North America could prove a fertile hunting ground for a replacement, as could Australia. Let the search for the toughest job in banking begin. In the meantime, now is a good point to assess Mr Hester's legacy at RBS. The figures are certainly impressive. About £1 trillion of asset disposals represents a staggering turnaround and certainly justifies the description of the rescue as the "world's largest restructuring." Coming into the bank in the wake of Fred Goodwin's "drive-by shooting," Mr Hester immediately imposed himself, telling his management team in blunt terms how they had been "followers, not leaders." If there was a criticism, it was his failure to embrace a more radical restructuring of RBS's investment banking arm, a decision that brought him into conflict with the Coalition, which eventually forced him to shrink the business dramatically. However, the attempt to maintain a sizeable investment banking division undoubtedly earned RBS several billion pounds that have ensured the lender has not required any additional taxpayer support. Whether Mr Hester's successor keeps to this strategy is debateable. The Treasury has made clear its desire for RBS to become even more domestically focused, so the new chief will be left in no doubt about the constraints on their decision making. The most important attribute of the new leader, though, will be an ability to convince the market that RBS is a good long-term investment. The privatisation of the bank will undoubtedly be the biggest issue in the new chief's in-tray. It was Mr Hester's apparent unwillingness to commit the next five years of his life to the task that seems to have convinced the Treasury and the RBS board that he had to go. As Mr Hester found, running RBS is arguably the hardest job in British, if not world, banking, and stepping into his shoes the new boss must be ready to face some tough times. What to do before the Russians come back As expected, two Russian giants are exiting the FTSE 100 under the index's latest quarterly review. Confirmation on Wednesday that precious metals group Polymetal and steelmaker Evraz were being demoted signalled the end of an era. Their departures mark quite a turnaround from the days when "The Russians are coming!" seemed a suitable description of the index's driving trends, as firms from the former Soviet Union led the arrival into the FTSE of assorted foreign-owned resource companies. ENRC, the Kazakh-focused miner being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, also looks set for an exit as its billionaire founder shareholders attempt to take it private. Kazakhmys, the Kazakh miner that holds 26pc of its peer ENRC, fell out of the FTSE 100 earlier this year - partly due to the drag on its stock from ENRC. Meanwhile, some would-be entrants now look less keen to follow their peers" path into the index. Russian potash giant Uralkali had been tentatively considering a FTSE 100 entrance but has since decided to stick with its GDRs - a type of secondary listing used to raise money from London investors. So, does it suggest the listing authorities are taking a more stringent tack? After all, the increasing presence of firms from Russia and other newer economic powers had been accompanied by a debate about many of these companies" suitability for the index, focusing on corporate governance and ownership structures. The argument over who should be let into Britain's blue-chip index has grown louder following the extreme embarrassments for the City presented by troubles at ENRC and Indonesian group Bumi, the latter proving a serious bump in the road for financier Nat Rothschild, who brought it to London. And yet, while authorities are looking at the issues around inclusion in the FTSE and, as a result, in the portfolios of many tracker pension funds, that is not what is pushing them out. Just as these resource giants were propelled into the FTSE 100 on the back of a commodity price boom, they are now dropping out amid a general slump in commodity markets. When boom time eventually returns - as it will - more strictures and standards will need to be in place to avoid a repeat of the problems that arose this time around.