UK Financial Investments Ltd running UK banks

[TonyGosling]

Concern as Kingman departs bank bailout organisation
TIM SHARP July 29 2009
JOHN Kingman, the Treasury civil servant in charge of managing the taxpayers' investments in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, is quitting to join the private sector.
The departure of Kingman, chief executive of UK Financial Investments, was announced as the body appointed private equity industry veteran Sir David Cooksey as its new chairman.
Kingman said: "I have tremendously enjoyed leading UKFI over the last year and think the organisation is now very well placed to deliver its mission of protecting and creating value for the taxpayer."
But Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said: "What is worrying about these changes is that Mr Kingman is leaving at a time when it's clear the government hasn't really got a grip on the banks.
"This is the one person within the Treasury who knew where all the skeletons are buried and what's going on.
"His departure at this time will leave a massive hole."
UKFI projects that it will take several years to profitably exit its banking stakes but has started seeking investment banks to advise it on the process.
A spokeswoman for UKFI confirmed that Kingman was leaving for the private sector but the organisation couldn't confirm what sort of role he would be seeking.
He will stay on until a replacement is found and "possibly for a handover period".
She said Kingman, who can expect to substantially increase his £143,000 salary, had indicated "for some time" to UKFI, which he has headed since its establishment in November 2008, and to the Treasury, where he was Second Permanent Secretary until being seconded, that he wanted to leave.
"He wanted to move on but not until UKFI was established and up and running," the spokeswoman said.
She said that Kingman, who previously worked for BP and the Financial Times, would not be entitled to a pay-off and confirmed he had not been dismissed.
Cooksey takes on his role from acting chairman Glen Moreno on August 1 and will lead the hunt for a successor to Kingman.
Moreno stepped in after Sir Philip Hampton moved from UKFI to become chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland in January.
Cooksey will be paid £100,000 a year with no bonus or pension entitlement.
Cooksey was an engineer before forming Advent Venture Partners in 1981 which he chaired until September 2006.
He has since taken on several public sector roles including chairing the Audit Commission, sitting on the board of the Bank of England and...

missing from the Herald article!!!!
the UK's largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust

[TonyGosling]

The chairman resigned last week.

[TonyGosling]

Fury as credit crunch civil servant lands Rothschild job

By Simon Watkins - Last updated at 1:18 AM on 22nd November 2009

The civil servant who oversaw the taxpayers’ stake in Britain’s crisis-hit banks is at the centre of a conflict-of-interest row after it emerged he is to join a leading investment bank.

John Kingman, the former chief executive of UK Financial Investments, is to become the new managing director of NM Rothschild.

The move is expected to be confirmed as early as this week, four months after he resigned from his £143,000 job controlling taxpayers’ stakes in the bailed-out banks.

His appointment has been vetted by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, the body set up to ensure that senior civil servants and politicians do not unfairly cash in on their inside information when they step down to join the private sector.

It is expected that under the terms of the deal Mr Kingman will be prevented from working on Government contracts or working with the state-owned banks for at least a year.

However, NM Rothschild is regarded as one of the favourites to take part in the sell-off of the Government’s stakes in Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland as well as Northern Rock, which is expected to begin inside the next two years.

Critics fear that Mr Kingman’s knowledge of Treasury policy and the financial secrets of the rescued banks will give him an advantage over rivals.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Commons Treasury Select Committee, said there appeared to be ‘a major conflict of interest’.

He added: ‘I think it is disturbing someone with such a knowledge of the public bail-out of the banks should be able to jump across to a private investment bank in this way.

'I shall be raising questions with the Treasury as a matter of urgency.’

NM Rothschild - a 200-year-old investment institution with assets of about £4.8billion - was a key player during the privatisations of the Eighties, making tens of millions of pounds advising the Thatcher government on the sell-offs of British Gas and the water and electricity companies among others.

Mr Kingman was a key member of the team that orchestrated the rescue of Northern Rock in 2007 and the banking bail-outs of 2008 and was seconded to become the first chief executive of UK Financial Investments.

Before joining the Treasury as a Press secretary to then-Chancellor Gordon Brown, he worked as a columnist for the Financial Times were he met Robert Peston, now the BBC’s high-profile business correspondent.

Some suspected Mr Kingman was the source for Peston’s many scoops on the banking crisis, beginning with the news of emergency loans to Northern Rock which prompted the catastrophic run on the mortgage bank.

But during a High Court case brought by Northern Rock shareholders over the bank’s nationalisation Mr Kingman issued a statement denying any knowledge of who leaked the crucial news.

The move to Rothschild will prove highly lucrative for Mr Kingman.

As a managing director of the investment bank he is likely to earn several times his UKFI salary and could quickly be earning up to £1million.