New finance chief for RBS spin-off bank
CHALLENGER bank Williams & Glyn has hired a new chief financial officer from New Zealand.
Royal Bank of Scotland – which is set to spin off its Williams & Glyn business – announced yesterday that Leigh Bartlett would join the bank from Westpac New Zealand. Bartlett, who is British, has worked at Westpac for four years as chief financial officer. Before that he held senior banking roles at RBS and Alliance & Leicester, among others.
RBS said that Bartlett would join Williams & Glynn in September.
RBS is being forced to offload Williams & Glyn under the terms of its 2008 bailout, as regulators want to create more competition in the UK personal and small business banking markets.
RBS has said that it plans to float Williams & Glynn as a separate entity on the London Stock Exchange in late 2016 .
RBS has tried to offload the Williams & Glyn business once before. It originally struck a deal to sell the challenger bank’s branches to Santander UK, but the Spanish-owned bank pulled out in the autumn of 2012 amid concerns over the William & Glynn’s technology platform.