THE Federation of Small Businesses has added its voice to calls for Lloyds Banking Group to appoint another Scottish representative to its board when Lord Sandy Leitch retires at the end of the year.
Lloyds tasked a board member with being a voice for its businesses north of the Border after its rescue takeover of Edinburgh-based Halifax Bank of Scotland three years ago.
While it has replaced Lord Leitch as group deputy chairman and is seeking someone to take his position as chairman of Scottish Widows, it has not committed to appointing another director with responsibility for Scotland.
Colin Borland, head of external affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses Scotland, said: “Scotland has some distinct features which make it different from the market south of the Border.
“It is important we have someone who is giving that Scottish representation, especially given how significant Lloyds Banking Group is to Scottish smaller businesses. It would certainly be reassuring to see somebody who has first-hand experience of the market fighting our corner.”
Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland account for 75% of small business lending in Scotland.
Mr Borland said until reform to open up the Scottish banking market “it is a good start” to have someone with a Scottish background on Lloyds’ board.
Earlier this month, the Independent Commission on Banking identified competition in the Scottish small business banking market as an area of concern.
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