If Peter Wong Tung-shun is disappointed not to have a seat on the main board of Standard Chartered Bank, he is doing a good job disguising it.
But notwithstanding the cheerful protests to the contrary from Mr Wong - who said the decision was at his own request - questions remain after yesterday's announcement.
The decision means the man responsible for delivering a little under half of the group's profits, as well as taking charge of the vital expansion proposed in the China market, will not be present when the group's top decision-making body meets.
True there are precedents for that. HSBC's Aman Mehta, chief executive of HSBC Asia Pacific, a position virtually identical to the one Mr Wong now holds, is on the board of HSBC Corp but not the group's main board.
But that was not the way things had been run at Standard Chartered until now, and Mervyn Davies, Mr Wong's predecessor, was on the main board. And since he was running a business contributing 42 per cent of group earnings, that seemed a perfectly natural appointment.
Then there is the fact that Mr Wong retains - in addition to assuming overall responsibility for the bank's operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China - his old job of running the consumer banking business for the group in Hong Kong.
That is a significantly greater load of managerial responsibilities than Mr Davies was charged with (his seat on the main board apart), and it came as little surprise when Mr Wong conceded in an interview with the South China Morning Post that an announcement in this regard was 'forthcoming'.
