Shamed bankers urged to
give up
honours

DISGRACED bankers have been urged to follow the lead of former HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby who announced he wanted to be stripped of his knighthood and was giving up part of his £580,000-a-year pension.
James CrosbyJames Crosby
James Crosby

Sir James said he was “deeply sorry” for what had happened at HBOS and the “ensuing consequences” for the bailed-out bank’s staff, shareholders and taxpayers.

He was among top executives heavily criticised in last week’s scathing report into the bank’s collapse by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards which said he was the “architect of the strategy that set the course for disaster” and held primary responsibility for the collapse along with former chairman Lord Stevenson and fellow chief executive Andy Hornby.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Their “toxic” misjudgments were blamed for the bank’s downfall and £20.5bn taxpayer bailout at the height of the financial crisis which the commission said meant they should not be allowed to work in the financial sector again.

Sir James, who lives near Harrogate, yesterday said the report made for “very chastening reading”.

He was given the knighthood shortly after leaving HBOS in 2006 but said he believed “it is right that I should now ask the appropriate authorities to take the necessary steps for its removal”.

He added: “Although I stood down as CEO of HBOS in 2006, some three years before it was taken over by Lloyds, I have never sought to disassociate myself from what has happened.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I would therefore like to repeat today what I said when I appeared in public before the commission in December; namely that I am deeply sorry for what happened at HBOS.”

His decision to forgo 30 per cent of his pension will still leave the 57-year-old with an annual payout worth £406,000.

Last night Bassetlaw MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury Select Committee, called for other disgraced bankers to follow Sir James’s lead. “At last we have a banker who is prepared to say he got it wrong and wishes to make amends,” he said.

“I hope now that this is not an isolated stance and others will follow his example and give up some of the grandeurs of power and pension benefits that they have gained on the back of poor leadership in the banks.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mr Mann also called on John Griffith-Jones, the chairman of the newly-created Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to resign because he failed to flag up large losses at HBOS in his role as chairman of accountancy firm KPMG.

It audited HBOS before its collapse, and gave the bank a clean bill of health.

The Labour MP said: “There has been no explanation of his role in the losses at HBOS. How come they got a clean bill of health?”

A FCA spokesman said Mr Griffith-Jones had been subject to a rigorous appointment process for the role and did not sit on the sub-committee of the authority tasked with overseeing its report into HBOS.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A spokesman for KPMG added: “We stand by the quality of our audit work at HBOS.”

The Parliamentary Commission’s report found three former bosses who ran HBOS in the run-up to its dramatic collapse were ultimately to blame for “catastrophic failures of management” and that it was not simply a victim of the worldwide financial crisis but would have failed anyway.

It called on the FCA to consider barring Sir James, Mr Hornby and Lord Stevenson from taking up any role in the financial sector.

Related topics: