Is Sir Victor the black horses white knight?
Sir Victor Blank has never been a man to decline a challenge. He had plenty of those in his time at Trinity Mirror, and for the most part rose to meet them. He will be less in the media spotlight at Lloyds TSB, but as chairman of one of Britain’s most venerable financial institutions, he will be under even closer scrutiny from his real peers – the small but powerful circle of bankers who run the financial services industry and much of UK plc. He will want to get his feet under the desk, of course, but he must already know intuitively that Lloyds cannot go on as it is. From being at the top in the 1990s, when it avoided the expensive mistakes on non-core banking suffered by its rivals, it has languished for years. Its focus on UK banking – which looked so sensible back then – now makes it look like a laggard, too timorous to be entrepreneurial in a rapidly globalising business world. The options are limited: Lloyds must either persuade the government to abandon its veto on British domes
