Simon English: Ex-TSB chair has form with IT disasters

WILL Samuel was in the news last week, and is now presumably keeping his head down. The former TSB chairman copped it for the bank’s notorious IT failure, which saw two million people frozen out of their accounts. The 250-plus page report into the disaster by Slaughter and May was scathing. The board lacked “common sense” and Samuel didn’t get people with independent tech expertise on to the board, even while embarking on a major computer overhaul. Samuel has had a lengthy City career.

He’s worked for Schroders, Citigroup and Lazard among others, in addition to roles advising the Financial Services Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. If you think the disaster at TSB that he oversaw might bring an end to this glittering career, you obviously don’t work in the City.

Samuel is now in charge of the integration of wealth manager Tilney with rival Smith & Williamson. The former, which he chairs, bought the latter for £625 million in September. The merged entity will look after assets of £45 billion in what the firms bragged will be a “transformational” deal. TSB’s own recent efforts were pretty transformational too, though not exactly in the way Mr Samuel hoped.

The point of merging groups like Tilney and Smith & Williamson is mostly just cost cuts. It will look for synergies by merging back-office functions and presumably (shudders) computer systems. You could say that Samuel at least has experience of total IT disasters, so is well placed to avoid another one.

And you could be reassured that he has just the right people around him. His chief executive is Chris Woodhouse, who as finance director helped float Debenhams in 2006 at a value of £2 billion. He pocketed many millions from this. Customers of Tilney or Smith & Williamson who had the misfortune of buying the Debenhams shares Woodhouse sold might be aware that they are now worth zero. Just the right man to look after other people’s hard earned, then.