At the HSBC extraordinary general meeting, the directors' level of absenteeism was 48 per cent. Would this be tolerated in an HSBC branch or call-centre?

I witnessed absenteeism on an epic scale the other day. This was not common-or-garden truanting, as practised by the ordinary British worker. No, this was boardroom-level absenteeism and, just like the pay packets, the numbers can be altogether bigger at the top of the corporate tree.

It was at the extraordinary general meeting of HSBC, Britain's biggest bank and second-biggest company. The shareholders were gathered to debate and vote on a momentous move. HSBC wanted to spend £9bn buying an American consumer credit business, Household International - one of the largest ever foreign investments by a British company.

Those with long memories will recall the last time a major British bank took a large punt on an American acquisition. It was when the old (and, at that time, mighty) Midland Bank bought Crocker, a catastrophic deal that ultimately led to Midland's downfall and, as it happens, its absorption into the maw of HSBC.

Quite apart from the deal's vast size, there were other risks. Household specialises in lending to America's poor. It would be an exaggeration to accuse it of loan-sharking, but some of its techniques have been unsavoury: last year it paid out $484m to settle official allegations of predatory lending. So HSBC also had to consider the risk to its comparatively unblemished reputation.

No question then, this was a pivotal deal. Yet HSBC's chairman, Sir John Bond, confessed that ten of the bank's 21 directors weren't able to be there. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Shell's ex-chief, Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary, and the City bigwig Sir Brian Williamson were among the luminaries with more pressing things to do that morning.

This absentee level of 48 per cent compares to perhaps 3-5 per cent on the typical shop floor. It would not be tolerated for one second in an HSBC branch or call-centre. The HSBC non-executive directors get paid £40,000 or more per year to attend six or eight meetings each year. It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect them to turn up.

If the non-executive directors are so cavalier about their duties in full view of the owners, what do they get up to behind the scenes? After the meeting I asked Sir John if he was annoyed that almost half the board had failed to turn up. Not at all, he said, because they all had important other commitments.

Does it really matter? In one sense, no. The meeting was a rubber-stamping exercise. The deal had been privately presented to the big City battalions weeks earlier and nodded through. HSBC must have saved thousands on air fares. At the meeting, Sir John - to his credit - gave the shareholders as much time as they wanted to ask awkward questions and gave them straight answers, too.

But the missing directors are, I think, symptomatic of something rotten at the top of many blue-chip companies. Non-executive directors seem to regard their duties as somehow voluntary. Under reforms proposed by Derek Higgs, the corporate governance tsar, their powers and numbers will be beefed up in an attempt to curb executive power and greed. But if they are to do much curbing, they need at least to turn up.

Clearing out my Auntie Ruth's house a few months ago, we came across her long forgotten Post Office savings account passbook. The account was opened on her behalf on 17 February 1913 with a £1 deposit. Asquith was then prime minister, the Romanovs were celebrating 300 years of Russian rule and Ruth, now 90, was seven months old. The last entry was in December 1938, by which time Ruth, a teacher, had accumulated £31 14s 9d. Hitler had just annexed Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain was waving his piece of paper. The passbook had since sat gathering dust.

We sent it off to National Savings in Glasgow with instructions to add 64 years of interest and send her back the loot. The reaction was initially a stunned silence, but after relentless chivvying from my father, the mighty Exchequer has finally disgorged. A cheque has just arrived for £242.29. There was no explanatory letter, not even a thank-you to my aunt for helping to finance the national debt non-stop for 89 years. (Shouldn't Gordon Brown rush out telegrams for such devotion to the public purse?)

It turns out Ruth has been earning a measly 3.25 per cent interest for all those years. Taking account of inflation, her nest egg has actually shrunk by three-quarters to £7.66 in pre-war prices, according to Barclays Capital, which has kindly crunched the numbers for me.

Had she put the money in gilts in 1938, it would have grown to £1,847; in shares, it would have mushroomed to £38,469. An instructive tale, perhaps, for those who after three torrid years in the stock market regard equity investment as money flushed away.

Patrick Hosking is deputy City editor of the London Evening Standard

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