Andy Hornby towered over his bank's annual shareholder meeting in Glasgow yesterday - literally.

The HBOS chief executive and Mike Ellis, the finance director, appeared on a giant screen above their fellow directors, beamed to the meeting from London, where they spent the morning explaining the £4 billion rights issue to the City.

“They should be here,” a furious shareholder yelled, to a round of applause. Another day, another bank, another apology.

“Let me immediately begin by apologising for not being with you in person,” Mr Hornby said.

There was a muted reaction at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre.

Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, the charming, wildly gesticulating HBOS chairman, punched the air when he spoke of the competitive advantage a stronger capital position would bring.

He laughed, perhaps too loudly, when shareholders cracked jokes at the company's expense.

When an investor referred to the City as “gherkin-land”, he enthused: “Thank you for a new expression in my vocabulary.”

He thanked everybody for their question, no matter how awkward, and singled out for praise his chief executive, who had, he said, acted like a bullet out of a gun to quash false rumours about the bank's exposure to bad debts.

Despite reassuring the packed conference hall, the tricky questions kept coming.

One investor said: “What I look for in a bank manager is prudence, not chasing market share ... Who is responsible for getting HBOS into the sub-prime and other risky mortgages and is he going to resign or be fired?”

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