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National Australia Bank has named Cameron Clyne as new chief executive.

Reports that Mr Clyne, the 40-year old head of NAB’s Bank of New Zealand, was to replace John Stewart surfaced on Tuesday. However NAB had refused to confirm the speculation, claiming that if such a decision had been made it would need to make a stock exchange announcement.

Mr Stewart, the former boss of the UK’s Woolwich Building Society, which was acquired by Barclays Bank in 2000 for £5.6bn ($11bn), took the helm at NAB in the wake of a foreign exchange trading scandal that cost the bank A$360m and forced the resignation of the previous chairman and chief executive.

Analysts, however, said the reputation of management had been undermined by the latest provisions and Mr Stewart’s role in particular had come in for criticism.

But Mr Chaney said any suggestions that the timing of the management shake-up was linked to the provisions was “completely off the mark”.

"The directors all take their responsibilities extremely seriously and those responsibilities include making sure you’re fully provided at all times based on all the knowledge you’ve got following the events that are likely to happen.

"That’s the situation today. So we certainly don’t have any expectation of making further provisions,” he said.

Mr Chaney said the bank had conducted an “extensive succession planning exercise” over the last 18 months, including an international search.

"We had planned for some time to make an announcement this week,” Mr Chaney said, adding the board had only signed off on the change on Wednesday.

Mr Chaney said during Mr Clyne’s time as head of Bank of New Zealand since the start of last year he had delivered a “strong operational performance, building on the foundations of a well run bank in a challenging market”.

Mr Clyne, a former partner at PwC who joined NAB in 2004, becomes chief executive designate in two months and formally takes over at the start of next year.

Mr Stewart said earlier this year that NAB needed stable management during a period of challenging market conditions.

He also said when he took the job at NAB he had only made a commitment to serve one year.

”There’s always been a good reason why I should just do another year,” he said, adding he promised the board to remain until a successor was in place.

“I’m getting on. I’m getting so old I don’t buy green bananas anymore. You’re going get to a point where you move on,” he said.



Other appointments

Former Gartmore chief to chair Hermes

Glyn Jones, former chief executive of investment managers Gartmore and briefly of Thames River Capital, is stepping up to chair Hermes, the manager of UK’s largest pension fund.

The appointment of Mr Jones, who trained as a management consultant, will underline Hermes’ new strategy of becoming a multi-boutique of autonomous asset management units and its increasing independence from its parent, the BT Pension Scheme.

Mr Jones was for a few months in 2006 chief executive of Thames River Capital where he worked on floating the privately-owned hedge fund manager. He left when the plan was abandoned. He was chief executive of Gartmore Investment Management, between 2000 and 2004, which built up a big hedge fund boutique.

Rupert Clarke, Hermes chief executive, said: “Glyn has strong tactical experience and will help us with our new strategy. After his time at Thames River and Gartmore he has a good perspective on the multi-boutique model – both the pitfalls and bear traps”.

Richard Bernays, former chairman, is standing down after three-and-a-half years, having recently launched Hermes on its new strategy.

Last month the group, which manages the BTPS and is also owned by it, restructured the management of its activist funds – the Focus fund range – into a single partnership giving managers a majority split of operating profits.

The group, which has about £36bn under management, has similar deals with other internal and external teams of fund managers of high-margin alternative assets.

The new structure is aimed at retaining and recruiting talented managers and paving the way to building a bigger business of third-party clients.

Six months ago, Mr Clarke, outlined plans to speed up Hermes’ expansion into actively-managed funds by splitting the group into two units, one to manage BT pension scheme assets while the other would manage third-party assets via the new boutique structures.

This followed the decision last year to outsource Hermes’ £17bn index-tracking portfolios to Legal & General in a big shift for Hermes. The group pioneered index tracking 20 years ago under Alastair Ross Goobey, its then head.

But the Hermes board concluded this year that it could not compete on cost with index-tracking specialists such as L&G.