Chairman - only Jobs for the (mostly) old Boys?

American Banks are standing tall, and most of them do not have an 'independent' Chairman to micro or macro manage their CEO's. So what IS the point of employing expensive Chairmen? Most of them are past their best years and this reverse ageism surely does not lead to the desired performance as the examples of quite a few (all?) of the European Banks attest. Maybe HSBC could save a penny or two by not wasting money on headhunters.
( 18 March 2016)