New Lloyds finance chief lands £6m pay deal

GEORGE Culmer, the new group finance director at part-nationalised lender Lloyds Banking Group, has landed a lucrative pay deal worth nearly £6m.

Lloyds, which is 40% owned by that taxpayer, said that Culmer will join the bank in May with a total pay package worth up to £5.86m in salary, bonus and pension payments.

Culmer, currently CFO of insurance group RSA, will pick up a compensation payment worth £1.9m for the cash and share bonuses he forfeited by leaving RSA for Lloyd’s.

He will be paid an annual salary of £720,000 plus a discretionary annual bonus of up to £1.44, and a further long term share incentive bonus of up to £1.62m. Culmer will also be awarded an annual payment of £180,000 towards his pension.

The appointment of Culmer brings to an end the search to replace Tim Tookey, who leaves Lloyds to join Friends Life, the UK life assurance provider created by Clive Cowdery’s Resolution Group.

Tookey follows former Lloyds senior insurance executive Andy Briggs to Friends Life. His departure represents the last vestiges of the management team that was led by former chief executive Eric Daniels during the bank’s ill-fated takeover of HBOS.

Daniels left last year and was replaced by António Horta-Osório, who joined the bank from Santander UK and took over as CEO in February 2011. Other members of the management team associated with the HBOS acquisition to have departed included Helen Weir, the former head of retail banking, who was recently appointed as CFO of John Lewis Partnership.

The bank’s chairman, Win Bischoff, said: “We are pleased to have been able to attract someone of the quality of George Culmer. He comes to us with a fine track record at RSA and with a strong background in insurance and in shareholder advocacy.”

Lloyds announced a £3.5bn in 2011.