Oh to be clear I agree with the OP that they were incompetent/greedy, I just think that missing a CRO is at best a symptom and not a cause. Every single invite to a risk committee meeting should know exactly well what sort of rates risk they had.

As for the hedge, it’s probably a greed/returns question. If you buy then 10 year and sell everything between say 2 to 10 years as a curve hedge, you’ve basically bought the two year with extra steps. There’s no free lunch where you get returns of ten year without the risk on ten year.

You could imagine some imperfect hedge might be better but sort of same problem.