Bim Afolami, the former City minister, is to return to HSBC – the bank he worked for before he embarked on a career in politics – in a boardroom role.
Sky News has learnt that Mr Afolami, who lost his Hitchin seat at last year’s general election, is to become a non-executive director of the FTSE-100 lender’s UK entity.
The appointment of Mr Afolami, who drove forward a range of key City reforms during his relatively brief stint as economic secretary to the Treasury, is expected to be confirmed within days.
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It will be his first significant private sector role since leaving Westminster, where he served as an MP for seven years.
Mr Afolami was a senior executive at HSBC for several years, before which he worked as a corporate lawyer at the Magic Circle firm Freshfields, and at the US law firm Simpson Thacher and Bartlett.
His recruitment to the board of HSBC UK is understood to have been signed off by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), which scrutinises private sector moves of former ministers and senior civil servants.
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A source close to the bank said it was also understood to have been approved by industry regulators.
At HSBC UK, whose board is chaired by the former London Stock Exchange chief Dame Clara Furse, Mr Afolami will help oversee one of Britain’s biggest high street banks.
The company operates 327 branches and employs 23,000 people.
In total, it has about 15 million customers.
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A spokesman for HSBC UK declined to comment on Wednesday evening.
