Sir Win was 70 on the 10th May this year and he’s talking about doing another 4 or 5 years at Lloyds.
Well given his performance over the last few weeks he’s beginning to look well past it.
Despite his key relationship being with Chief Exec Antonio he failed to notice his man going off the rails until Antonio pretty much broke "on the job" and had to leave the building for extended sick leave.
Sir Win’s first move then to appoint Tim Tookey as Interim leader, a man who had already been paid off and starts his new job in February.
Then after a couple of weeks Sir Win totally spooks the markets by appointing a different interim “in case” Antonio does not come back in the time frame Sir Win had promised.
It turns out his choice this time is David Roberts who 2 years ago left his job at an Austrian Bank due to ill health with heart problems, blimey !!
The same day Nathan Bostock the highly trumpeted new head of retail poached from RBS and friend of Antonio then announces he’s not coming so to counter that Sir Win announces to the City that Lloyds are in negotiations with George Culmer to be new Finance Director. To which his employer RSA immediately stated he is on a 12 months notice period.
Could Sir Win have handled this any worse. These issues are not that difficult in comparison to the complexities over branch sales, redundancies, tier 1 capital, Euro exposure etc.
It’s time the Lloyds Board got focused and concentrated on getting the company out of this mess rather than dithering around.
It looks to me that the dithering Sir Win needs to leave before his 71st birthday and take his top team with him.
Whilst many Private Investors are losing their livelihoods through this mess the Lloyds Board just blunder on regardless.
Next thing I’m going to be very interested in is what bonuses the Lloyds Directors award themselves for their performance this year.
I’m struggling to see how this could possibly be regarded as anything other than abject failure on their part.
David Cameron, over to you on that one !!!
