banks

[brien]

which bank thought that life was complicated enough

[plowter]

Wasn't it Abbey National?

[CheekyChops]

It was Nat West.

[Breton]

One of the banks may have said that, but few, if any, actually put the ideal into practice.
Banks are regulated by the FSA, which is an organisation of little people with nothing else to do but dream up new silly regulations, rules and restrictions, that are then transmitted to banks as "recommendations".
The banks then pass this lot onto a specialist department so that they can reinterpret them in as complicated a way as possible. This makes them look very clever and industrious to the other incompetents in the bank and gives everyone an opportunity to have yet another day out attending a training day to be told of the lovely new forms that they have to fill in.
All this is felt necessary to reduce the banks' exposure to risk.
And while this is going on, the crooks in the derivatives trading rooms carry on risking and losing billions of pounds of money and earning huge bonuses for doing so.
Because most banks' managements cannot tell you what a derivative is, this is what banks mean by life being complicated enough.