City profiles

Eric Daniels Former Lloyds Bank chief Eric Daniels was once known as “Mr Carpet Slippers” – the antithesis of the brash American financier. Yet the man in charge of Lloyds “at the height of the credit crunch” is clearly made of stronger stuff than we thought, said Dylan Lobo on Citywire. Daniels is preparing to sue the bailed-out lender for some £500,000 in unpaid bonuses – a move “bound to cause public outrage” given that “taxpayers were forced to shell out around £20bn” to keep it afloat in 2009, after Daniels orchestrated its merger with the doomed HBOS, leaving Lloyds nursing heavy losses. Daniels, who left Lloyds in 2011 “with a £5m pension pot”, has filed his claim in the High Court, alongside a separate claim filed by Lloyds’ former head of wholesale banking, Truett Tate, said the FT. Both maintain they were refused bonuses in 2012, despite meeting performance targets. It looks set to be a busy autumn of litigation for Daniels who, since leaving Lloyds, has taken up further City roles with Stormharbour, CVC and Funding Circle. Both he and Tate “are also named as defendants” in a case against Lloyds filed by some 6,000 shareholders, “who claim they were misled into approving the takeover of HBOS”. Shareholders might also list another beef: it was on Daniel’s watch that Lloyds ramped up the sale of payment protection insurance products. He once observed that Lloyds was “on the side of the angels” when it came to PPI. But the affair, which has cost Lloyds £18bn in compensation, “has become the most costly scandal to hit British banks”.