The Treasury's acting permanent secretary John Kingman is set to announce that he is leaving Whitehall to return to the private sector.
Kingman threw his hat into the ring to succeed Sir Nicholas Macpherson – the Treasury perm sec who left the department last week after more than a decade at the top of the finance ministry – but ultimately lost out to Tom Scholar.
Kingman has held a number of senior Treasury roles, including managing director, Public Services & Growth at the Treasury, and director of HMT's Enterprise and Growth Unit. At the height of the global financial crisis, Kingman was named chief executive of UK Financial Investments, the arm’s-length government body set up to manage the taxpayer's interest in bailed-out banks.
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Outside of Whitehall, Kingman has worked on the Lex column of the Financial Times newspaper, in the group CEO's office at energy giant BP, and between 2010 and 2012 he took a break from the Treasury to work at investment bank Rothschild.
News of Kingman's planned departure was reported by the FT on Monday morning, with the paper saying he is due to inform colleagues today of his intention to leave Whitehall at the end of July.
Kingman is leading the Treasury on an interim basis until after June's referendum on membership of the European Union, with Scholar continuing to act as David Cameron's most senior European adviser until then.