The CEO of Lloyds Bank turned its fortunes around but the anxiety almost broke him

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-ceo-of-lloyds-bank-turned-its-fortunes-around-but-the-anxiety-almost-broke-him-fg970cpjr

António Horta-Osório describes for the first time how restoring Lloyds Bank’s fortunes almost shattered his mental health. The top City boss reveals what happened – and why he’s on a mission to end the stigma of workplace stress. Interview by Louise Carpenter

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In May this year, António Horta-Osório, chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, summoned his top executives to a meeting room on the ninth floor of its City HQ, with its panoramic views of London and St Paul’s. A video link was ready to go live. “I want you to know,” he told his staff, “that I got a call from UK Financial Investments and the last government shares have now been sold. We are now a fully private bank. We have given back all the taxpayers’ money, and some more, so you should all be very proud.”

And therein brought an end to a catastrophic financial period for the bank, once saddled with toxic debts and payment protection insurance mis-selling claims (its total bill was £17.4 billion, the largest of any British bank), struggling to cope in a disastrous global economy and bailed out by the government – the taxpayer, which is to say, you and me – in 2008 to the tune of £20.3 billion.

The Lisbon-born Horta-Osório’s perfectly white, movie-star smile had never been wider. Composed, suave, charming, fantastically rich (his 2016 pay package was worth around £5.5 million) – disarmingly so, in all four respects – he really was, at that moment in May, master of all he surveyed: the only chief executive of a bailed-out UK bank to have paid back every penny to the government in the six years since he was encouraged to take on the task by George Osborne, the chancellor at the time.

For all his rhetoric about the importance of great teamwork and continuing to “do things better day by day” and “focusing on our customers”, the moment, for Horta-Osório, 53, was not just a professional triumph, but a personal one, too. In bringing Lloyds back from the brink and refunding the taxpayer – which he had pledged to do publicly within 100 days of taking on the task – Horta-Osório almost broke himself.

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eta: I know some hate bankers here, but he is still a human being. When people like him are open about their struggles, it helps us all.