The boss of Lloyds Bank today told its 75,000 staff that anyone can make a “mistake” following allegations he had an affair with a former special adviser to Tony Blair.
“I don’t expect anyone to get everything right all the time,” Antonio Horta-Osorio wrote to employees after reports he spent almost £4,000 while allegedly entertaining academic Wendy Piatt, 45, as he attended a banking conference in Singapore.
He added: “The important point being how we learn from those mistakes and the decisions and actions we take afterward.”
The bank, bailed out by taxpayers for £20 billion in 2009, said it had examined Mr Horta-Osorio’s expenses at the conference and cleared him of any wrongdoing.
He said: “As you’d expect, I pay for my personal expenses whilst away and only reclaim what is a business expense.” But he spoke of his “deep regret” for any damage the allegations had done to the bank, which he joined in 2011 and which is still nine per cent owned by taxpayers.
“My personal life is obviously a private matter as it is for anyone else,” he said. “But I deeply regret being the cause of so much adverse publicity and the damage that has been done to the group’s reputation. It has detracted from the great work which you do for our customers.” The Lloyds boss, 52, has been married to his wife Ana for 25 years and returned to work this week after several weeks’ leave.
The Treasury has received £16 billion back from the bailout and he has returned Lloyds to profit. But he has also shrunk it rapidly, including a further 3,000 job cuts earlier this year.
Today he told remaining staff: “I have been a strong advocate of expecting the highest professional standards from everyone at the bank, and that includes me ... having the highest professional standards raises the bar against which we are judged and as I have always said we must recognise that mistakes will be made.”
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