By and large it was a good week for the big banks — underpinned by encouraging news from the wider economy, in which every little uptick brings a few more zombie borrowers back to the land of the living.

Lloyds returned to profit, promised to start paying decent dividends again and declared itself oven-ready for return to the private sector, with the market anticipating an immediate sale to institutions of a first tranche of the taxpayers’ 39 per cent stake.