The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver has been at HSBC for 35 years. The Globe's Eric Reguly writes that by his own admission, Mr. Gulliver could not watch over all his managers. "Can I know what every one of 257,000 people is doing -- clearly I can't," he said during questioning last week before the British Parliament's Treasury select committee. In other words, says Mr. Reguly, epic misbehaviour such as the scandal at HSBC's Swiss private bank, now under investigation for aiding and abetting tax avoidance, tax evasion and "aggravated" money laundering, could happen again. In effect, Mr. Gulliver said he was head of a bank that was too big to run. To his credit, he is shrinking HSBC. Since 2011 he has unloaded 77 businesses. He is trying to kill off the federal structure that gave far-flung units too much autonomy. HSBC, however, is still an oversized octopus and it is not alone in the banking world. If bank CEOs want to build global empires, they and the regulators that allow them to get so big have a duty to ensure they can be properly managed. Big is not best in banking. In HSBC's case, it was a liability.