Deputy Chairman

Born in 1956, he is married with four daughters.Educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford (Mathematics), he qualified as a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries in 1980.

He joined Scottish Amicable in 1977 and spent ten years in fund management before taking charge of IT, marketing and finance for the Group. A founder director of J Rothschild Assurance (now St James Place) in 1991 he was a director of St James Place plc from 2000 to 2006.

In 1994 he moved to the Halifax to launch its bancassurance business. Following the acquisition of Clerical Medical he joined the Board of Halifax plc with responsibility for the Group's investment product and general insurance businesses. In January 1999 he became Chief Executive of Halifax plc and in September 2001, following the merger with the Bank of Scotland, was appointed as HBOS's first Chief Executive. He stood down from this position in July 2006 and left the Group.

He is the senior independent director of ITV plc (formerly Granada plc, Nov 2002- present) and Compass Group plc (Feb 2007- present), Deputy Chairman of the Financial Services Authority (Jan 2004- present) and a trustee of Cancer Research UK (Feb- present). He is also a member of the European Advisory Board of Bridgepoint Capital (Sept 2006- present), a member of the Finance Committee of the Delegacy of Oxford University Press (Sept 2006- present) and Chairman of the Government's Public-Private Forum on Identity Management (Sept 2006- present). He received a knighthood in 2006.