Lloyds poaches top StanChart exec for head of wholesale job
LLOYDS Banking Group has poached a senior executive from rival Standard Chartered (StanChart) to fill a hole made vacant by the departure of its former head of wholesale, Truett Tate.
The appointment of Andrew Bester, who is the chief operating officer of consumer banking at StanChart, will supplant Andrew Géczy, who had been acting head of wholesale, and who will now go back to his management of a division of the business.
Bester, who is likely to join after the summer, will be one of a slimmed-down team that will report directly to Lloyds’ chief executive António Horta-Osório, after the large number of reporting lines answering to him previously made it difficult for him to run the bank.
The head of wholesale role has been vacant since January, when Tate left the bank shortly after Horta-Osório’s return from leave, which was caused by a severe bout of stress-induced insomnia.
Bester has previous worked in roles for StanChart’s businesses in Africa and Asia and was an investment banker at Deutsche Bank for six years.
Horta-Osório said that Bester’s “extensive and broad experience… in transforming businesses” make him qualified to lead an overhaul of the wholesale bank.
The main aim is to grow the business by doing more cross-selling between Lloyds’ small business and corporate clients and its wholesale division.