Civil servants will lead hunt to find new chairman for nationalised bank agency

The Treasury is carrying out its own search to find the new chairman for UKFI, the government agency which overseas the shareholdings in the UK's banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group.

Treasury officials have started interviewing potential candidates to take over from Glen Moreno, the acting chairman, and hope to have the position filled shortly. A Treasury spokesman said it was carrying out the search partly to save on fees but also because it had several department officials who are used to recruiting at the most senior level. Usually, the Treasury hires head-hunting firms such as Whitehead Mann, for such high-level searches.

UKFI, run by former Treasury managing director John Kingman, last week appointed Keith Morgan from Banco Santander to look after the Government's shareholdings in Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. Mr Morgan is a director of Sovereign Bancorp in the US and was previously strategic director of Abbey National.