Lloyds Bank chief Eric Daniels to stand down

So another one bites the dust. This time, it is the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, Eric Daniels who has announced that he is to step down.

Mr Daniels is the last of the big credit-crunch bosses to exit the stage – following Sir Fred Goodwin and Sir Tom McKillop at RBS.

And not a moment too soon according to some Lloyds shareholders who are still furious about the acquisition of HBOS, the stricken mortgage lender, that transformed Lloyds from one of Britain’s most conservative banks into an institution on the brink of collapse and needing to be rescued by the taxpayer.

Mr Daniels follows Lloyds chairman, Sir Victor Blank, who left with his tail between his legs a year ago, to be replaced by Sir Win Bischoff, who had formerly been the top man at Citigroup in the US.

We’re going to do better and better, so I wanted to give the board ample time to find a successor, I wanted it to be an orderly succession and a clean handover. Lloyds chief executive Eric Daniels

It was Victor Blank (derided as Victor Blank-cheque by some shareholders) who famously negotiated the acquisition of HBOS over a cocktail with Gordon Brown during a garden party at the height of the financial crisis.

Once the dust settled and the losses became clear, Mr Blank did not survive at Lloyds to tell the tale. So is Mr Daniels the next to fall on his sword?

Certainly, Mr Bischoff wanted his chief executive to go earlier this year, but Mr Daniels managed to cling on and was there, just a few weeks ago, to mark the Lloyds’s return to profit.

At the time, he proudly declared he had no intention of leaving and wanted to stay at the helm of Lloyds until the integration of HBOS was fully complete.

“No timeframe”
One source told me that meant Mr Daniels would be there for two to three years more. Yet today, the chief executive told Channel 4 News he had never set any expectations as to his departure date.

“I’ve never set a date or a timeframe,” Mr Daniels said. He said the decision to leave was his own (the media hyped up the row with Mr Bischoff apparently.)

The integration of HBOS is more than half way through and is, he assured, “letter perfect”.