Eric Daniels: Lloyds chief who made one deal too many

The once-cautious deal-maker who turned Lloyds's once-proud prancing black horse into a knackered old nag.

Eric Daniels counted himself lucky when he landed the top job at Lloyds TSB after a lengthy stint at Citigroup, much of it spent negotiating with the fearsome juntas of Chile and Argentina. The years of Latino turmoil left their mark: "Paranoia is a permanent state," he told The Daily Telegraph. But he must have felt that was behind him in 2003 when he settled into Lloyds and prepared to give his conservative instincts free rein. While racier peers ran amok, he built Lloyds into arguably the world's dullest bank.

By British banking standards, Daniels has an exotic background: his father was a German academic, his mother Chinese, his wife is Panamanian, and he was raised on the plains of Montana. In a different life, says The Scotsman, noting the laidback Midwestern drawl, "he could have been a character in a spaghetti western". Daniels loved to dream. But he kept his ambitions safely within the bounds of impossibility. A few years back, rumours circulated that he hoped to acquire Halifax Bank of Scotland, establishing Lloyds as a high-street mega-bank, commanding a third of the retail market. But Daniels knew the competition authorities would never allow it, so he could safely indulge in the pipe-dream.

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