Former bank boss gives up knighthood

Guardian News and Media/LondonSir James Crosby, the former boss of HBOS, has asked for his knighthood to be revoked after a scathing report by MPs found that he sowed the “seeds of destruction” at one of Britain’s biggest banks. Crosby was chief executive of HBOS until 2006, but was described as the architect of a strategy that just two years later led to the bank having to be rescued by Lloyds and eventually bailed out with £20bn of taxpayers’ money. He said he was “deeply sorry” for his role in HBOS’s failure and asked for his knighthood to be removed.He is believed to be the first person to have voluntarily offered to hand back a knighthood. The 57-year-old chose to give up the honour, granted in 2006, rather than face the prospect of being stripped of it - as Fred Goodwin, the former boss of RBS was last year. Crosby also offered to hand back 30% of his £580,000-a-year pension.He will still collect £406,000 annually in pension payments - 80 times as much as the average private sector worker.On Tuesday he also quit his £125,000-a-year role on the board of catering company Compass.Attention is now likely to turn to his successor at HBOS, Andy Hornby, and the chairman, crossbench peer Lord Stevenson, who were also blamed in the damning report. Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott said: “James Crosby has done the right thing. Clearly it’s not sustainable for Andy Hornby not to follow.”Crosby’s decision came hours after the Prime Minister, David Cameron, refused to intervene when MPs from all three main political parties called for action.The former banker, who is sitting on a pension pot worth more than £20mn, said he had “never sought to dissociate” himself from HBOS’s near-failure and its bailout by taxpayers.“Shortly after I left HBOS, I received the enormous honour of a knighthood in recognition of my own - and many other people’s - contribution to the creation of a company which was then widely regarded as a great success,” he said.“In view of what has happened subsequently to HBOS, I believe that it is right that I should now ask the appropriate authorities to take the necessary steps for its removal.” The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards report, published on Friday, had described him as the “architect of the strategy that set the course for disaster”.The MPs blamed Crosby for putting in place “a culture of perilously high-risk lending” with a lack of controls that “may have given rise to an accident waiting to happen”.