With one bound, Jack was free.

The option to reclassify some financial assets from 'available for sale' to 'held to maturity' has been seized by two European banking groups Schroeders and Deutsche Bank. In the case of Schroeders this turns a £50m loss into a profit.

If this is being treated as a change of accounting policy, prior year figures should have been restated.

[The title is taken from a story about writing in weekly comics in days when comics included tales told in episodes from week to week. According to the story, the hero of a tale had been left bound to a tree and surrounded by hostile savages at the end of one week's episode. Unfortunately the writer had gone sick and no one could think how to get the hero out of his predicament. Eventually the writer returned to work, took up his pen and started the next week's instalment with the words, 'With one bound, Jack was free'.]