But there was a problem when pay awards appeared to "bear no relation to performance" - a situation that "undermines trust in the whole system", he said.

BBC: Labour calls for 'responsible and better' capitalism

Mistakes by these financial professionals result in disastrous consequences to plans that bear no relation to the amount they are paid.

FORBES: A ''Tipping Point'' for Public Pensions? (November 2009)

Some exporters, such as South Korea's Samsung Electronics, are so international that their valuations should anyway bear little relation to their countries of origin.

ECONOMIST: Emerging markets

That inconvenient truth is that even when London Interbank Offered Rates are not "fixed", they may still not bear very much relation to reality - because banks are not actually offering much unsecured money to each other at all.

BBC: Inconvenient truths about Libor

There are moments when music and lyrics bear only the faintest relation to each other, a tricky state of affairs in a work that is almost bereft of spoken dialogue.

NEWYORKER: Evita

Bear markets usually begin when share prices are high in relation to earnings: which, currently, they are.

ECONOMIST: A wobble down Wall Street

When a bank becomes a lynchpin of the global economy, in the way that HSBC has done, are the hands of justice shackled in relation to it - because a proper spanking would be too much for a fragile global economic recovery to bear?

BBC: Are some banks too big to jail?