NATIONAL Australia Bank finance director Mark Joiner, who last year said the UK economy faces a decade on its knees, has joined the board of its British arm Clydesdale Bank with colleague Rick Sawers.
The appointments are the final pieces of a radical reshaping of Clydesdale that will see NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne become its chairman when Sir Malcolm Williamson retires next month.
The shake-up, which has seen all but two of Clydesdale's non-executive directors depart, was instigated after a strategic review that concluded Clydesdale should retrench to its heartlands in Scotland and the north of England.
Clydesdale chief David Thorburn said: "As well as bringing extensive experience in financial services, their appointment underlines the group's support for the new chapter we are beginning following the strategic review."
Originally from the UK where he qualified as a chartered accountant, Mr Joiner began his career as a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group in Australia and the United States.
Before joining NAB in 2006, Mr Joiner held the position of chief financial officer and head of strategy and mergers and acquisitions for Citigroup's New York-based wealth management business.
There has long been speculation about a potential sale of 174 year-old Clydesdale by NAB, which bought the Glasgow-based bank in 1987 and added Yorkshire Bank three years later.
In an interview nine months ago, Mr Joiner gave a strong indication that NAB would seek to sell Clydesdale in the medium term, but only once the UK economy was back on track.
He said: "The market is at the bottom and so is - sterling. It is a rotten time to sell. There will be no fire sale."
He added: "We would prefer to own the asset, raise the returns and exit a few years later, or IPO [initial public offering] it - there are options."
At the time he explained that it would not be seeking to buy a 630-strong branch network being sold by Lloyds Banking Group.He was quoted as saying then: "Why do we need to bias our capital to the UK when the economy is expected to be on its knees for 10 years or so? There are growth opportunities in Australia."
Rick Sawers oversees NAB's wholesale banking arm. In 25 years with the group he has been deputy chief executive of nabCapital, its former global wholesale and investment banking division, and group treasurer. Before that he spent a decade working at rival Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.
Last month Clydesdale appointed four new non-executive directors: David Browne, former executive at hedge fund manager Man Group; Barbara Ridpath, former executive managing director at ratings agency Standard & Poor's; Friends Provident director David Allvey; and Alex Shapland, former partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. With the departure of three long-standing board members at the end of May, the only non-executives remaining with Clydesdale are Sir David Fell and Richard Gregory.
Its strategic review published in early May concluded that Clydesdale should close 29 of its small business centres, shed 1400 employees and transfer £6.2 billion of commercial property loans onto NAB's balance sheet.
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