Lloyds Banking Group has appointed Nick Prettejohn, former chief executive of Lloyd's of London and of Prudential UK and Europe, as chairman of Scottish Widows Group.
Mr Prettejohn will take on the role as the newest non-executive director on the board of Lloyds Banking Group. The Scottish Widows board, required as a separate entity by insurance regulation, has six executives and five other non-executives. The bank's chairman, Lord Blackwell, said Mr Prettejohn's appointment would allow him to step down as chairman of Scottish Widows and concentrate on chairing the banking group.
The insurance industry veteran takes over at the helm of a slimmed-down Widows, following the £550m sale of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership to Aberdeen Asset Management in a deal concluded on April 1. SWIP employed around 500 mainly in Edinburgh. A Lloyds spokesman said it was impossible to say how many were employed by Scottish Widows as its activities were so embedded within the group. But he estimated that around 3,000 of Lloyds' total 18,000 headcount were employed in Scottish Widows life and pensions activity, most of them in Scotland.
Mr Prettejohn's credentials were enhanced by a spell on the board of the new banking regulator the Prudential Regulation Authority, which he joined last June. Last month he said he was stepping down in favour of a "future outside regulation". He spent six years running Lloyd's of London, moving to the Prudential in 2006 where he was tipped for the top job in 2009, but quit after it was handed to finance director Tidjane Thiam.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article