Sir Maurice Victor Blank, FRCOG(Hon) (born 1942) is a prominent British businessman.[1]
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Born in 1942,[2][3] he was educated at Stockport Grammar School and then studied Modern History at St. Catherine's College, Oxford.
In 1969, aged 26, 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 Weinberg & Blank on Take-overs and Mergers, a textbook on the topic. 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.[4] From 1985-1996 he held the posts of Chairman and Chief Executive of Charterhouse.[1] He was also a Director of the Royal Bank of Scotland from 1985 to 1993.[5]
After retiring from Charterhouse, Blank held a number of Chairmanships of FTSE 100 companies such as Trinity Mirror plc (1999–2006)[5] and GUS plc (2000–2006).[5] 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.[5] He was appointed a senior adviser to US private equity group TPG Capital in November 2007.[6] As of 2007 Sir Victor was also Chairman of the Industrial and Development Advisory Board.[6]
He was knighted in 1999 for services to the financial industry.[1] In 2009, by contrast, he was dubbed 'Sir Victor Blank: The crony with a gift for disaster' by Daily Mail columnist Peter Oborne [7]
Sir Victor became Chairman of Lloyds TSB in May 2006.[5]
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, the 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 Gordon 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.[3]
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 dilligence 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.[8] Sir Victor confirmed in an August 2009 interview with the BBC's Robert Peston [9] 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.[10]
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 March 6, 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 May 17, 2009 it was announced that Blank would stand down as chairman of Lloyds Banking Group.[11]
In 2006 Blank received an apology from Roger Ainsworth, Master of St. Catherine's College, Oxford, in response to a letter from the media lawyers Carter-Ruck requesting a withdrawal by Ainsworth of an allegation, and an apology.[12] No damages or costs were claimed. Ainsworth had made allegations against Blank 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[12] 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 members of the Council of the University of Oxford and members of the Congregation of the University, over the propriety of re-electing lay members of Council for extended periods.[13] He subsequently announced that he would not be seeking re-election,[14] a move arguably connected to a call by nearly 250 members of the University's Congregation for the re-election proposal to be debated.[15]
Blank is involved with the following not-for-profit organisations: