Lloyds Banking Group is poised to appoint as its new chairman Lord Blackwell, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
Known as Lord Norman Blackwell the peer sat on Standard Life's board for nine years, the last four as senior independent director, until May last year, and was then appointed by Lloyds as a non-executive and chairman of Scottish Widows.
Lord Blackwell, 61, will succeed Sir Win Bischoff, who replaced Sir Victor Blank in 2009 a year after the enlarged group was created by the £21 billion bailout of HBOS. Former Citigroup chairman Sir Win, 72, said last May he would retire within a year after leading the bank through a critical period. He recruited Antonio Horta-Osorio to replace Eric Daniels as chief executive, the bank has been restructured into one focused on the UK economy, and its performance ensured the government was able to sell down a 6% stake in Lloyds in September to reduce its stake to 33%.
Sir Win is now likely to step down at next year's annual meeting. Reports said Lord Blackwell's appointment has still to be approved by the Financial Conduct Authority, the Prudential Regulation Authority, HM Treasury and UK Financial Investments. Lord Blackwell started his career with electronics giant Plessey,
He worked in Baroness Thatcher's policy unit for two years and returned in 1995 to head the unit for John Major, who made him a peer after the 1997 election.
He worked for NatWest for three years as director of group development until its acquisition by RBS in 2000, before starting a non-executive career. He is chairman of support services company Interserve, and a non-executive director of Ofcom and of health and safety group Halma.
Lord Blackwell gave evidence in Edinburgh Sheriff Court this year in the trial on breach of the peace charges of Noor Mohammed, a cleaner in a bank in Edinburgh and an employee of Interserve. The peer said a package sent to him containing a photo of an Islamic warrior had put him in a state of fear and alarm, but the jury returned a 'not proven' verdict.
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