The Asian Development Bank's May governors meeting included sessions where bankers spoke candidly about the problems faced by the region's financial sector.
In what became something of an exercise in self-flagellation, Asia's leading bankers gathered in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai last month to thrash out what had gone wrong in the past three years.
As the 1,000-odd bankers and delegates debated, gossiped, wheeled and dealed in the air-conditioned comfort of the Westin Riverside Plaza Hotel in Thailand's second city, a similar number of local "indigenous people", as one seminar would have it, protested peacefully outside, baffling delegates with banners written in Thai.
Inside, the charismatic president of Thai Farmers Bank, Banthoon Lamsam, stole the show during a series of satellite seminars to the main governors meetings. Four bankers from across the region had been invited to share their thoughts on "Challenges for Banks and Financial Institutions in Asia". Fuji Bank president Yoshiro Yamamoto and Industrial Finance Corporation of Thailand director Aswin Kongsiri raised the usual issues - new technology, tackling non-performing loans and the threat of global competition.
Banthoon, looking every inch the Wall Street banker, with his slicked-back hair-do and Harvard attitude, took to the lectern.