Blank prepares for Lloyds TSB leap

Investors also approved, pushing Lloyds TSB shares up to 515p after the news of his appointment.

But then Blank is rather good at betting on dark horses, perhaps because he was once a bit of an outsider himself.

He is thrilled at the prospect of his new role. “Lloyds is a super bank, with tremendous potential to grow even though it’s a tough and competitive market,” he said. “People point out that it has fallen to fifth position in Britain, but they don’t see all the fantastic things going on behind the scenes.

“I am still at the learning stage but what I do see is that Eric Daniels, the chief executive, has put together a superb team, which has perhaps not always been appreciated by the outside world.”

Blank said it was too early to say how Lloyds TSB would propel itself back up the league tables. Only seven years ago it was the biggest and most profitable bank in Britain — and Europe.

However, Blank wouldn’t be Blank if he didn’t have some ideas up his sleeve. He is too discreet to tell all now, and certainly not until he is formally in place as deputy chairman in March and chairman in May.

His timing at Lloyds TSB looks smart. Only days before news of his new role came out, the shares were trading at the highest level for three years, helped by rumours that Warren Buffett, the prominent American investor, had been buying and by a couple of City analysts recommending the stock.

The black horse is suddenly back in favour — spurred on by reports of growth in the wholesale bank and signs that Scottish Widows, its life-assurance business, is at last improving. Results for 2005 are due at the end of February and are likely to show pre-tax profits up to £3.3 billion plus a further improvement in total shareholder return.

But the City is itching for deals in the banking sector, and Blank is known not only as an excellent chairman with banking and retail experience but as a dealmaker.

Who does he think will be the first to move? He is not going to be drawn: “If I had a motto on the wall, it would be ‘value for shareholders’. The City believes the sector is on the brink of a lot of movement. I just don’t know and it’s too early for me to give a considered view on what Lloyds should do to stay ahead,” he said.

“Customer service is critical for all banks. Call centres have gone too far and I can see a swing back to more face-to-face service. Lloyds has one of the best reputations for customer services,” he said, although Blank admitted he was relying on anecdotal evidence as his own Lloyds TSB account has not been used for years.

“Yes, I will be switching accounts. And no, I am not going to be drawn on credit cards,” he said, remembering the terrible trouble Matt Barrett, Barclays’ chairman, got into when he said that Barclaycard’s charges were a rip-off.

Blank will soon be gathering his own evidence as he plans to visit branches incognito to see what happens on the ground. This may be difficult. He has the look of a Roman emperor: the sort of head you can imagine on a coin. His face is long and can look doleful when he is not smiling. Like many big men — he is 6ft 3in — he is gentle in manner. His monogrammed shirt, with the initials MVB, reveals that his first name is not Victor, but Maurice.

()Today he is all smiles. Even life at Trinity Mirror, where he has been chairman for eight years, has calmed down. It has probably been his trickiest job, overseeing three chief executives, the high-profile departure of Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan and a grim time for the industry generally.

But he has loved every minute of it. “The industry is going through tough times. Advertising is down sharply and newspaper circulations are in long-term decline. But we are investing heavily in online sites.”

The Mirror, though, is not for sale. “There have been offers,” he said. “We have looked at them, it would be derelict not to look, but my leaving is not going to hasten a sale. The press has built a myth on this one.”

Times may have been tough, but Trinity’s shares have risen 12% to 610p since he has been at the helm. He is an investor in Trinity as well, having brought shares when he joined.

GUS must be the company whose shareholders are the most grateful to Blank. He, too, counts the retail group as his greatest achievement and owns 215,000 of its shares. Since Blank became chairman six years ago, GUS’s share price has risen 195% to 1,025p. The value could be even greater when GUS floats Experian, the business information services company, which may be worth £6 billion. This will leave the rump valued at about £4 billion. He will stay on until the split is completed.

Peers say Blank is such a good chairman because of his discipline, his focus and ability to listen. “He has that brilliant knack of playing silences; he gets a lot out of people like this,” said one colleague.

Blank made his first millions while at the Charterhouse merchant bank in 1982 when he helped with the buyout of Woolworths from its American parent. Blank, who had been working on the deal while at the law firm Clifford Chance, where he was the youngest ever partner, invested £750,000 of his money in the shares.

He won’t say how much he made from Woolworths but it was enough to buy his exquisite Elizabethan manor house in Oxfordshire and was the first of many lucrative deals.

It is here that he holds the annual Wellbeing of Women charity cricket match, drawing in celebrities as well as top cricketers — his mother died from ovarian cancer when he was 12.

Blank said he is not a workaholic but hearing him describe his outside interests makes you dizzy. He is chairman of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, sits on the Israel British Business Council — but also works with Palestinian businessmen — and is on the councils of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment as well as the University of Oxford. He is adviser to the Environmental Change Institute, chairman of the governors of University College School and a governor of Tel Aviv University. He is also on the CBI boardroom group.

“You have to give back when you have been as lucky as I have,” he said.

Blank and his wife Sylvia have three children: the eldest son, Simon, works in the City; daughter Anna lives in Amsterdam; and the youngest, Robert, is studying Chinese in London.

Blank is of Ukrainian descent, his Jewish grandfather fleeing the Ukraine during the pogroms to settle in Stockport, near Manchester, and work in the textile “sweat-shops”. His grandfather became a tailor, as did Blank’s father, who went on to own a gent’s outfitters in Stockport. He encouraged him to study medicine, because of his mother’s death, but Blank, who went to Stockport grammar, was always set on the law after reading history at Oxford.

There is a Lowry-style painting of the terraced streets in Stockport, where his family lived, which has followed him from Charterhouse to his GUS office in Mayfair. Blank tells the story of when Henry Lewis, a former chief executive at Marks & Spencer who grew up near him in Stockport, once remarked how well-off the Blank family had been. “I said that can’t be so. We had a tiny two up, two down house with an outside loo.” Lewis replied: “So did we, but we shared our loo with the neighbours.”

The painting will follow Blank to Lloyds TSB’s offices in Gresham Street, just round the corner from Old Jewry where he began his journey to the top as a lawyer with the firm that was then known as Clifford Turner.

Blank smiles: “You have to always remember where you came from.”