Ron Sandler
RON Sandler was recruited by the Treasury to head Northern Rock and took up post as Chief Executive when the bank was nationalized early in 2008.
He is a troubleshooter with a record of taking on difficult jobs. The former chief executive at Lloyd’s of London gained credit for bringing the insurance market back from the brink of collapse in the 1990s.
In 2001 he was appointed by then Chancellor Gordon Brown to lead a review of the long-term savings industry in the UK.
The resulting report called for sweeping changes in medium and long-term pension vehicles. Mr Sandler criticised the financial services industry for complicated products that had high charges and relatively poor returns.
His findings put him at odds with some in the life and pensions field, but gained him respect elsewhere as a man prepared to stand up to the industry.
Born in Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – he started his career in 1976 as a strategy consultant with The Boston Consulting Group in London before being transferred to California.
But it was his tenure at Lloyd’s of London from 1995 to 1999 that brought him note as an industry troubleshooter.
He helped settle an acrimonious dispute between the insurance market and wealthy individuals.
He was then parachuted into NatWest in 1999 at a time when the bank was attempting to fight off bids from Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
RBS eventually prevailed, but Mr Sandler, who is married with two sons, again won plaudits for the defence strategy he put in place.
Since the 2002 Sandler review, he has taken on a number of roles including chairs at financial education charity pfeg, insurance firm Paternoster and IT firm Computacenter.
Sandler was replaced by Gary Hoffman in October 2008 but remains with the bank as non-executive chairman.