THE retirement of Lloyds Banking Group legal chief Harry Baines will sever the last link between the bank's senior management team and Edinburgh-based Halifax Bank of Scotland, which Lloyds acquired in a rescue takeover in 2009.
Mr Baines has stepped down as company secretary and general counsel but will continue to work for the group part-time for the next few months "providing support on legacy issues".
Documents filed with Companies House show he has been replaced as company secretary of Lloyds Banking Group and a number of subsidiaries, including Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland, by Claire Davies, the head of the company secretariat at Lloyds.
Ms Davies was company secretary at Legal & General before joining Lloyds in 2009.
Mr Baines was general counsel and company secretary of HBOS at the time of its rescue takeover by Lloyds TSB.
He joined Halifax in 1999 and led the legal team after Halifax's merger with Bank of Scotland in 2001.
He had been head of legal for vehicle parts market Turner & Newell.
After the Lloyds-HBOS merger completed in 2009 he retained the same role, securing one of only two top jobs in the combined bank that went to HBOS executives.
Jo Dawson, chief executive of HBOS's insurance and investment division and head of its branch network, initially became wealth and international director of the enlarged group, but left in early 2010.
She was drawn into the controversy over HBOS's lending practices because she replaced the bank's risk manager Paul Moore, who later made allegations about the climate of risk-taking in the run-up to the credit crunch.
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