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The outgoing chairman of Lloyds Bank is unrepentant about its takeover of HBOS - a move that put it in hock to the Government. As an M&A strategist, he took the rap. Yet it was a collective decision, he insists, and it will come good
Sir 'Victor Blank wants to be loved. For that reason alone, it's hard not to feel sympathy for someone who believes totally that he engineered a deal that in time will prove to have been in the best interests of Lloyds, the bank he chaired but had to resign from when its shareholders were less than impressed. They didn't see what he saw: that the merger with HBOS will create a powerhouse in UK banking, that the pain of absorbing a deeply troubled HBOS and sacrificing Lloyds' long reputation for conservatism was a price worth paying.
The manner of his going also hurt. Blank, 66, is one of those who will be forever associated with the credit crunch - a banker who has been accused of taking a good bank, Lloyds, and turning it into a bad one, Lloyds-HBOS.
After the deal was done, it was disclosed that HBOS had lost £10.8bn in 2008. Under the banks' recapitalisation scheme, the Government took a 43% stake in the group. The dividend, much treasured by shareholders in the old Lloyds TSB, was scrapped. Investors rounded on Blank in May, he said he'd be stepping down. As he did so, the EC warned that Lloyds may be stripped of the Halifax business as punishment for requiring billions in government loans.
We're sitting in what remains his office inside the gleaming modern Lloyds headquarters in the City. The view from his eighth floor window to St Paul's is impressive. So too is the long wall, filled with framed cuttings, pictures and drawings from a long and mosdy glorious career. His support staff beaver away, serving the wishes of 'MVB', as they refer to Maurice Victor Blank.
It's hard to imagine that soon, and certainly by the time you read this, he will have gone. The memorabilia on show will be boxed up and sent to his splendid 16th-century manor house near Oxford, and someone else will be sitting at this desk. That someone...