LONDON - The British government agency in charge of managing the holdings in the country’s bailed out banks on Monday appointed a new chief executive to oversee the pending share sale in the part-nationalized firms.
James Leigh Pemberton, the current U.K. chief executive at Credit Suisse, will take charge of United Kingdom Financial Investments next month. He replaces Jim O’Neil, formerly of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who announced in April that he was stepping down from the role to return the American bank.
The appointment of Mr. Leigh Pemberton, the son of a former governor of the Bank of England, comes as the British government is mulling selling part of its stake in Lloyds Banking Group, which received a multibillion-dollar bailout in 2008.
After a major restructuring at the bank, which is 39 percent owned by British taxpayers, Lloyds Banking Group stock is currently trading at a higher price than the government paid for its initial holding, and Lloyds is expected to start selling shares to investors by the end of the year.
Royal Bank of Scotland, which is currently 81 percent owned by the British government, is still struggling under the weight of ongoing bad loan provisions and changes to its senior management.
The U.K. government is still considering whether to hive off R.B.S.’s toxic assets into a separate unit, and analysts believe it remains unlikely that politicians will be able to reduce the stake in R.B.S. before the next British election in 2015.
Shares in Lloyds and R.B.S. rose less than 1 percent in early morning trading in London on Monday.
Mr. Leigh Pemberton’s new role at United Kingdom Financial Investments completes a full circle for Credit Suisse, which advised the British government on the bailouts for Lloyds and R.B.S. in 2008. Mr. Leigh Pemberton has held a number of high profile positions at bank, including running its European equity capital markets for five years through 2001.
In another sign that the British government agency is preparing to offload its stakes in the local banks, United Kingdom Financial Investments also announced on Monday that it had appointed Oliver Holbourn, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch executive, to become its head of capital markets.
‘‘Lloyds and R.B.S. are both now entering new phases in their development as taxpayer investments and now is the right time for UKFI to take on fresh leadership,’’ the agency’s chairman, Robin Budenberg, said in a statement.
