Former Treasury official John Kingman to join Barclays UK as chair

Sir John Kingman, a former senior Treasury official, will join the Barclays board in June as chair of Barclays UK, the group’s ringfenced bank, as well as a non-executive director.

Kingman, who stood down as chair of Tesco bank on Sunday, will succeed Crawford Gillies. Mike Ashley will step down as chair of the audit committees of Barclays and Barclays Bank plc and will be replaced by Julia Wilson, a former group finance director at 3i Group.

Previously tipped as a potential successor to Bank of England governor Mark Carney, Kingman was put in charge of rescuing Britain’s banks during the financial crisis.

The former Treasury mandarin was appointed to lead a probe into the regulator for the audit sector, the Financial Reporting Council, in 2018 and is chair of FTSE 100 insurer Legal & General.

During the probe he described the regulator as a “ramshackle house” and recommended that it be scrapped and replaced by a more powerful and independent watchdog.

Kingman has also served as chief executive of UK Financial Investments and as global co-head of the financial institutions group at Rothschild.