Abbey National sacks chief executive

Abbey National, the UK's second largest mortgage lender, has sacked its £883,000-a-year chief executive, Ian Harley, following a terrible year for the bank.

Abbey National said today that 52-year-old Harley would "step down with immediate effect" and gave no reasons for his departure.

Rumours have been circulating in the City for weeks leading Harley to declare that he gets a "worse press than Bin Laden." He has been routinely described as an "embattled" "under-fire" and "beleaguered" chief executive.

The market has not forgiven him for saying everything was fine and then delivering a shock profit warning last month. The City was still trying to absorb Abbey's admission in November that it had lost £95 million in the collapsed US energy firm Enron.

Harley, the son of a Scottish coal miner, has spent the last 25 years working his way up through the ranks of the bank and was made chief executive in 1998.