For all of the regulatory angst about U.S. banks, most people would agree British banks have faced an even harsher regulatory climate. The financial crisis has emboldened regulators to put forward some draconian measures when it comes to bonuses, too-big-to-fail and just about everything else.

Bruce Packard, analyst for Seymour Pierce, sounded a loud alarm recently when he warned that he expected "the Independent Commission on Banking, the British panel set up to review and recommend regulations for the country's banks, to come to some radical conclusions. Among them: the breakup of Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays."

There was a lot of too-big-to-fail talk in the United States, but the idea of an actual forced break-up was never on the front burner.

"We expect the I.C.B. to sign the death warrant of the current U.K. banking status quo on April 11," Packard wrote to clients, notes the New York Times. "This may be good news for shareholders: structural change may benefit owners of capital, rather than bonus-collecting managers, in our view,"

There would be a great deal of short-term pain, however. "Full breakups would halve the return on tangible equity at Barclays and Lloyds, and a 40 percent reduction at RBS. Numerically this might be interpreted as a bad outcome for shareholders," he wrote.

The rhetoric from other regulators on too-big-to-fail in the U.K. has been powerful or overwrought, depending on what you believe. I doubt this will happen. But the conversation has been going at a substantive level.

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