Today, in terms of both assets and profits, you can just about divide HSBC into three geographic slices: North America, Europe and emerging markets like Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
"It's fine if in Wales we say let's divide the cake in ways that seems fair across all parties, but if the result is the slices are too small to be effective in competition with other parts of the UK or Europe, then we're not going to get very far with it, " he said.