Royal Bank of Scotland’s insurance arm is poised to appoint Mike Biggs as its chairman with a brief to lead a £5 billion flotation of the Churchill and Direct Line brands this year.
Mr Biggs, a former HSBC banker and Aviva finance director, is chairman of Resolution Limited, Clive Cowdery’s FTSE 100 investment vehicle.
It is understood that Mr Biggs intends to stay on at Resolution until 2014, when its UK Life Project, to consolidate life assurance companies, draws to an end. It will mean that Mr Biggs is likely to chair two FTSE 100 companies at the same time, a move that is frowned on by some investors, but which does not breach current boardroom best-practice codes.
Mr Biggs, a hands-on company boss with extensive experience of mergers and acquisitions, would join the ranks of other serial company chairmen such as Sir Nigel Rudd and Lord Stevenson of Coddenham.
Sir Nigel chairs the engineering group Invensys but, during his lengthy career, also led the board at Alliance Boots, the chemist chain, and the glassmaker Pilkington. A deal-making veteran, he was deputy chairman at Barclays and is a director of BAE Systems. Lord Stevenson chaired both HBOS, the bank acquired by Lloyds in 2009, and Pearson for several years before stepping down from the publishing group in 2005.
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The appointment of Mr Biggs, 59, would mark a coup for RBS and would complete the senior boardroom line-up at Direct Line Group, which was known as RBS Insurance until last month.
Unlike Paul Geddes, the chief executive, Mr Biggs has direct experience of running a listed company. He was chief executive of Mr Cowdery’s first Resolution vehicle before it was taken over by Hugh Osmond’s closed life funds specialist, Pearl Group, in 2008.
He has chaired Resolution Limited since it was created in 2008, presiding over several complex insurance acquisitions, including Friends Provident and AXA Sun Life.
Several other well-known insurance executives were tipped for the Direct Line chairmanship, including Andy Haste, the former chief executive of RSA, and Patrick Snowball, who runs the Suncorp Group insurance company in Australia.
RBS has to relinquish majority control of its insurance arm by the end of next year and sell its entire interest by December 2014 as a condition of the £45.5 billion of state aid that it has received.
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It is understood that the current floatation plan involves the sale of a minority stake this year followed by a secondary share offering in 2013.
RBS has previously received interest from private-equity buyers and could still rekindle its sale plans. RBS and Resolution declined to comment.