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Chancellor Rachel Reeves is ramping up a coverage dedication to financial progress by hiring one of many Metropolis of London’s high funding bankers, filling a spot in personal sector expertise on the Treasury’s high ranks.
Jim O’Neil, a senior funding banker at Financial institution of America, was on Wednesday named as second everlasting secretary on the Treasury targeted on progress.
O’Neil’s appointment comes as ministers finalise an industrial technique, the centrepiece of the Labour authorities’s progress technique, as a consequence of be printed subsequent month.
“It ought to have been carried out sooner,” mentioned one authorities adviser.
One individual near the appointment mentioned senior Labour figures had been speaking to O’Neil since earlier than final July’s election, however there had been a lot “faffing”.
O’Neil is the primary senior Metropolis of London determine to carry the second everlasting secretary progress function since Sir Charles Roxburgh, now chair of the Lloyd’s of London insurance coverage market, left the Treasury in 2022.
The transfer marks a return to the general public sector for O’Neil, who received plaudits for operating UK Monetary Investments, the physique arrange after the monetary disaster to handle the federal government’s stakes in bailed-out banks.
The 58-year-old funding banker, who has run Financial institution of America’s company and funding banking operation in Europe, the Center East and Africa for the previous eight years, is because of begin on the Treasury in July.
“His intensive data of the personal sector will probably be important in serving to us ship our number-one mission to develop the financial system,” mentioned Reeves.
The Treasury launched a proper recruitment course of for the second everlasting secretary function in December 2024, providing a wage of as much as £200,000.
O’Neil will exchange Cat Little, who was second everlasting secretary however had totally different tasks targeted on public spending and worldwide finance, with a remit to work with enterprise to unblock limitations to progress.
The New York-born banker, who’s a naturalised Briton and in 2014 obtained an OBE for companies to British banking, has agreed a plan with the Treasury for him to promote his unvested shares in BofA as quickly as he receives them.
The job commercial mentioned the profitable candidate could be “tasked with partaking the enterprise neighborhood to proceed to grasp how authorities and enterprise can work collectively to ship enhanced progress and the federal government’s wider priorities”.
It additionally mentioned the Treasury was searching for somebody with “deep monetary, enterprise, business and analytical expertise” and that non-public sector and company finance expertise was “important”.
O’Neil, to not be confused with former Treasury minister and economist Lord Jim O’Neill, has beforehand held a key public service function.
He was charged with promoting the federal government’s stakes in Royal Financial institution of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group as head of UK Monetary Investments, a job he give up in 2013 to rejoin Financial institution of America Merrill Lynch.
“We live by means of a time of nice change globally, making the necessity for an financial system of stability, resilience and progress all of the extra vital,” O’Neil mentioned on Wednesday.
