HM Treasury’s acting permanent secretary John Kingman is set for a move to the City of London as chairman of financial services behemoth Legal & General, it has emerged.
Kingman was second permanent secretary at the Treasury until the departure of perm sec Sir Nicholas Macpherson in April.
He lost out to Tom Scholar in the contest to succeed Macpherson and subsequently tendered his resignation. Kingman is expected to leave the department over the summer.
At the weekend, Sky News reported Kingman had been approached about taking over from John Stewart at the FTSE-100 financial services group, a move that would require the green light from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments and the Prudential Regulation Authority. The post is said to come with a £340,000 salary.
Prior to his current role, Kingman was co-head of Rothschild’s financial institutions business, and before that headed UK Financial Investments, which rescued Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland in the 2008 financial crisis.
New Treasury permanent secretary: Tom Scholar named as Sir Nick Macpherson's successor
Treasury's John Kingman leaving Whitehall for the private sector
Sky said it was “unclear” how close Kingman was to landing the L&G role, but pointed to a London Stock Exchange announcement 10 days ago that said the firm "expects to be in a position to make an announcement on the appointment of a successor chair in the coming weeks".
City editor Mark Kleinman said that while it would be unusual for a company of the stature of L&G to appoint someone so inexperienced in UK boardrooms as its chairman, few who knew 47-year-old Kingman would doubt his “intellectual credentials” for the post.
Sky quoted a recruitment source saying that if Kingman joined L&G it would probably be as a non-executive director “before becoming chairman next year”.
CSW approached HM Treasury for comment on the story. It declined the opportunity.