LONDON - From spy vs. spy to spy vs. banker?
Jonathan Evans, the former director general of Britain’s MI5, the domestic security and counterintelligence agency, may find that a new career in banking will suit him just fine. HSBC on Friday appointed him as an independent nonexecutive director of its board.
Mr. Evans’s background is a good fit for a bank, considering the issues confronting the financial sector. His experience and expertise in “combating threats to data security, critical infrastructure and from international terrorism and organized crime will be of considerable value to the board as it addresses its governance of systemic threats,†HSBC’s chairman, Douglas Flint, said in a statement.
Mr. Evans’s appointment comes amid a renewed focus at the British bank on compliance and governance after HSBC agreed in December to pay $1.92 billion to settle money laundering charges, including accusations by American authorities that the bank allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder money.
Mr. Evans, 55, will also join HSBC’s financial system vulnerabilities committee, which the bank set up earlier this year. Other members include David Hartnett, a former British permanent secretary for tax who was criticized in 2011 by British lawmakers for favoring corporate taxpayers, including Goldman Sachs; and William Hughes, the former head of Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency.
Mr. Evans’s appointment is initially for three years and can be extended with shareholder approval. He will earn an annual director’s fee of £95,000, or $144,000, and an additional £30,000 a year as a member of HSBC’s financial system vulnerabilities committee.
Mr. Evans joined the security service in 1980, working on counterespionage investigations. Ten days before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Evans was promoted to MI5’s management board as director of international counterterrorism. He became director general of MI5 in 2007 before retiring from the service in April.
(No word yet on what secret gadgets he may have in his briefcase.)
