One of our cheekier commentaries in Banking Day this year conjectured the early, though not imminent, departure of an Australian big bank chief executive relative to any orthodox view on how much longer CEO so and so might remain at the helm of a major bank.As this week's set of concentrated hearings in Canberra - headlined by a galaxy of big bank CEOs - crawls into life before a parliamentary economics committee, it's a convenient time to revisit Banking Day's take on some of the themes we ran in the wash up of the industry's May 2016 reporting season.The background analysis featured in an article in mid May Commonwealth and ANZ queue CEO switch summarised our take on the political economy of banking in Australia. We chanced a view on bank succession planning at two entities against the backdrop of the then lively public debate of a mooted royal commission, a debate around its zenith at the time (the opening phase of this year's election).The returned Turnbull government has diverted the political clamour from that period into a neutered process of public reviews of the industry, one phase of which starts (and maybe finishes) this week. A distracting few days lies ahead for the industry and its followers as the four bank CEOs explain, pitch and defend the reputations of their institutions before a ten member panel of the House of Representatives' Standing Committee on Economics. A recap on observations shared five months ago may help set the scene for this week. For instance: "Two big bank boards are closing in on the selection of a new CEO", Banking Day reported in mid May, qualifying that this was something the publication "knows or infers". There was a sense back then that Bill Shorten and the Labor Party might be getting somewhere with their calculated revival of bank bashing as a pillar of the opposition's drive for government. A few more excerpts from that May commentary: "The sector is practically tone deaf to the caravan of retaliation and retribution that might yet take hold if thirty years of dishumour toward Australia's post-1981 regulation money power expresses itself in national policy. "Labor's national leadership in all likelihood have little idea, even a central, definite thought on where to point the Royal Commission. "Will there be rush by banks to fess up to misconduct, if there's more to disclose? "A bruising period of incremental news on Australian banking malfeasance must lie ahead. "This has to be destabilising in an oligopoly where two big bank boards are closing in on the selection of a new CEO." The fate of ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott led our list of two back in May. Elliott, we'd guess, is a lesser chance to cop any great bruising at this week's Canberra hearings. Second, we wrote, "must be the CEO of Commonwealth Bank."It's the catalogue of conduct issues at CBA that places Narev and his employer in the least comfortable position ahead of the economics committee's examination of him and his peers. In this inquiry the committee has positioned him as