Victor Blank

Sir Maurice Victor Blank (born 9 November 1942), is a British businessman.

Background

Early life & education

Born in 1942, he was educated at Stockport Grammar School and then obtained an MA in Modern History at St Catherine's College, Oxford.

Career

In 1969, at only 26 years of age, Blank was made the youngest Partner in the history of Clifford-Turner (now Clifford Chance). At Clifford-Turner he specialised in corporate law, and co-wrote a textbook, Weinberg & Blank on Take-overs and Mergers. He left Clifford Turner in 1981 to become Head of Corporate Finance at Charterhouse (now part of HSBC), where he masterminded the buyout of Woolworth's. From 1985-1996 he held the posts of Chairman and Chief Executive of Charterhouse. He was also a Director of the Royal Bank of Scotland from 1985 to 1993.

In 1999, Victor Blank was appointed Chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers which, during his tenure, became the U.K.’s largest newspaper publishing group as part of the Trinity Mirror conglomerate. From 1993-2006 he was Vice Chairman and then Chairman of Great Universal Stores plc, a conglomerate in the FTSE 100, which was separated into four different companies (Experian, Argos & Homebase, Burberry and Lewis Stores), the shares of which were distributed to shareholders. He was made Chairman of GUS in 2000.

He was knighted in 1999 for services to the financial industry. In May 2006, Sir Victor became Chairman of Lloyds TSB which, in 2008, took over Halifax Bank Of Scotland (HBOS) to become the U.K.’s largest retail bank. He was a member of the Financial Reporting Council from 2002 to 2007, and a member of the Council of Oxford University from 2000 to 2007. He was appointed a senior adviser to US private equity group TPG Capital in November 2007. From 2000-2006 Sir Victor was also Chairman of the Industrial Development Advisory Board. In 2010, Sir Victor was appointed as a UK Business Ambassador by the government to promote British commercial interests around the world. After the election in 2010 Sir Victor was invited to continue as a Business Ambassador by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Sir Victor and former Lloyds TSB chief executive Eric Daniels, have both been recipients of letters from Lloyd’s shareholders who are members of the Lloyds Action Now Association. The letters represent a campaign on behalf of 7,000 private shareholders claiming compensation for their losses arising from the HBOS takeover. They stipulate that, information concerning a £25.4 billion Emergency Liquidity Assistance loan from the Bank of England to HBOS, which was made to keep it afloat before the takeover, was not declared in takeover offer documents on which they were asked to vote. They stipulate that, had this loan been declared, then the true financial state of the bank would have been made apparent.

Lloyds TSB and Lloyds Banking Group

Sir Victor became Chairman of Lloyds TSB in May 2006.

Credit crisis

When the credit crisis overwhelmed its first victims – like Northern Rock Bank – Lloyds TSB stood out, its conservative policies having largely kept it out of the so-called "toxic securities" dealt in by other banks with riskier business models. However, as more UK banks like Royal Bank of Scotland teetered on the brink of collapse before being bailed out by the British government, Prime Minister Gordon Brown encouraged Lloyds TSB to merge with the another huge but struggling bank – Halifax Bank of Scotland or HBOS.

Sir Victor was a key mover in the arrangement with Prime Minister Brown to permit the merger to go ahead despite competition issues. At a dinner on 15 September both attended, an agreement was reached in principle, and the FSA began moves the following day.

On January 19, 2009, the merger between Lloyds TSB and HBOS formally took place with the adoption of a new name for the combined group - "Lloyds Banking Group" – with Sir Victor Blank as its chairman.

On February 12, 2009, the CEO of Lloyds group, Eric Daniels, was questioned about the banking crisis during a session of the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons. One of the key issues concerned Lloyds' takeover of HBOS in 2008, and the amount of due diligence carried out before the acquisition. He said that a company would always like to do more due diligence on another company, but there are limits on how much is possible prior to an actual acquisition. Losses were a little higher than the £10 billion expected owing to write-offs of property loans due to falling property prices and the lack of demand. Sir Victor confirmed in an August 2009 interview with the BBC's Robert Peston that losses had been "at the worst end of expectations", but what had surprised the Lloyds board was the speed at which the losses happened, due to the unexpectedly sharp contraction of the world economy in the last quarter of 2008 and the early part of 2009.

The bank has also been criticized for proceeding with bonus payments of £120 million in the current crisis whilst investors fumed at the massive losses they were suffering coupled with Sir Victor's airy dismissal of any prospect of dividend payments. Sir Victor had told Jeff Randall the payment of a dividend to shareholders would not have been - as he put it - "seemly" - and in any case a dividend blocker had been applied by the Government for 2009.

Contrary to much popular belief, the capital injection by the UK government was not connected to the HBOS merger. Official documents released in relation to the merger confirmed that the FSA would have required Lloyds TSB to have a bigger capital injection if it had not undertaken the merger and stayed standalone. That capital injection would still have led to the government's 'dividend blocker'.

After the October 2008 bailouts of RBS, HBOS and Lloyds TSB and Lloyds TSB's January 2009 merger with HBOS, the government was holding a 43% stake in Lloyds Banking Group, but then on 6 March 2009, after it became apparent that the global economy had contracted more than expected, the UK government announced their Asset Protection Scheme to underwrite future significant losses at Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland. Detailed negotiations on the terms of entry to the scheme are expected to conclude in September 2009. It is currently not expected that Lloyds will not use the scheme to the extent originally envisaged, thus keeping the government's holding to less than 50%.

On 17 May 2009, it was announced that Blank would stand down as chairman of Lloyds Banking Group.

Oxford controversy

In 2006 Blank received an apology from Roger Ainsworth, Master of St Catherine's College, Oxford (at which Blank had studied and of which he was an Honorary Fellow), in response to a letter sent on his behalf by the media lawyers Carter-Ruck requesting a withdrawal by Ainsworth of an allegation as well as an apology. No damages or costs were claimed. The allegation against Blank was in relation to discussions over the proportion of Oxford University's funding that should be passed on to colleges.

In the immediate aftermath of the Carter-Ruck letter, Ainsworth made a statement to the Heads of Colleges and Bursars who attended the meeting of the Conference of Colleges in which he withdrew his remarks and apologised. Some members of the University saw the use of letters from libel specialists as an inappropriate way of resolving differences between colleagues.

In the summer of 2007, Blank was at the centre of a disagreement between some members of the Council of the University of Oxford and members of the Congregation of the University, over the Council's proposal to re-nominate Blank for election to serve for an exceptional third term as an external member. He subsequently announced that he would not be seeking re-election, a move arguably connected to a call by several hundred members of the University's Congregation for the re-election proposal to be debated and, if a majority so decided, rejected.

Calls for knighthood to be removed

In early 2012, a group of Conservative party MPs urged that Blank's actions whilst working for Lloyds TSB were personally discreditable to the degree that he should be stripped of his knighthood.

Other interests

Blank was the first external member of the Oxford University Governing Council.

Sir Victor was the guest editor of the Today programme in 2011. Over the Christmas period it is traditional that guest editors are invited to edit the show and set the agenda for the programme. The principal item was a long interview with ex South African President F.W De Klerk. Sir Victor also chose leadership and philanthropy, the Eurozone crisis and the Arab/Israeli conflict as topics for discussion.

Blank is involved with the following not-for-profit organisations:

• He is Chairman of the charity "Wellbeing of Women".
• He is the Chairman of UJS Hillel.
• Chairman of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' health research charity, as well as an Honorary Fellow and a Patron of the Royal College
• Chairman of the Council of University College School
• He is an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford.
• A member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
• He is a Vice President of the Jewish Leadership Council.
• He is also a member of the CBI Boardroom Issues Group.

• "Every year his Oxford manor house hosts a cricket tournament attended by the great and the good to raise funds for the Wellbeing women's charity, which is close to his heart after the death of his mother, when he was 12, from ovarian cancer."

See also

• 2008 United Kingdom bank rescue package
• 2009 United Kingdom bank rescue package
• Eric Daniels
• UK Financial Investments Limited