Coral CEO under scrutiny for former banking role

The CEO of British land and online gambling group Coral, Andy Hornby, is likely to feature in a reportedly “eviscerating” parliamentary commission report into the failure of the HBOS bank being released today, reports the publication This Is Money.

Hornby was chief executive of the lender until it was rescued by LloydsTSB in September 2008, a decision that plunged Lloyds itself into a financial crisis that took GBP 20 billion in government bail-out money to stave off collapse mere weeks after the transaction.

This Is Money reports that the parliamentary commission’s report will focus heavily on the part played by Hornby and his predecessor as chief executive, Sir James Crosby in the HBOS failure.

“Both men have so far escaped censure for the reckless lending spree at the bank which has saddled Lloyds with a GBP 50 billion in bad loans that will never be paid back,” This Is Money notes.

Peter Cummings, the former head of HBOS’s corporate lending division, is the only man to have been punished thus far. He received a GBPO 500,000 fine in September last year, along with a lifetime ban from working in the City.

Both Crosby and Hornby apologised for the part they played in the collapse of HBOS when they gave evidence to the banking commission in December.

The report is also expected to be critical of the role played at HBOS by Lord Stevenson, the former chairman, who was accused by parliamentarians of ‘living in cloud cuckoo land’ for claiming that he was not responsible for HBOS’s troubles because he only worked there part time.

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