A sad end to a distinguished career
From a personal point of view, you’d have to say it was a great shame because Peter Flavel has been an absolutely exceptional chief executive of Coutts.
He joined from JP Morgan where he’d spent the bulk of his career.
He really came into a business that was at quite a low ebb at the time.
Coutts had just been fined very heavily, more than £6m by the predecessor to the Financial Conduct Authority for various misdemeanours.
He not only ran Coutts, he was in charge of the whole world wealth management business at NatWest.
It’s a much broader job description than just running Coutts, but he came into the business when it was at quite a low ebb and did a great deal to modernise it.
He merged a lot of functions, he took a lot of cost out of the business, but it became very rapidly one of the more profitable parts of the broader NatWest Group.
He went out of his way to attract a clientele that perhaps wouldn’t have previously been associated with Coutts.
There were a lot of sportsmen and musicians who were lured to the business, he gave it a far more modern feel, and that’s actually borne out if you go to the Coutts head office.
It has the feel of a sort of boutique hotel now, rather than the sort of rather fusty business with which it was associated, of course, famously, the banker to Queen Elizabeth II and also, although they never confirm it, the King.
I actually asked Mr Flavel on air once whether he was the King’s banker, and he said, somewhat ironically in view of recent events, “well, we never discussed client affairs”, but that’s really what has undone Mr Flavel.
Obviously, they decided they were going to let Nigel Farage go as a customer.
Initially, this narrative was put out that it was because he failed to meet the bank’s wealth criteria.
We now know, not least from all the documentation that Nigel Farage himself was released into the public domain, it was really because they didn’t like his opinions very much.
He was described in one meeting, in documents put before one committee, that Coutts described him as a disingenuous grifter and you really can’t describe your customers like that, and particularly, not one that is in the public domain.
So, an air of inevitability to the departure.
Nigel Farage had wanted Peter Flavel to go, as he did Alison Rose, so he’s claimed another scalp.
Mohammad Kamal Syed will replace Peter Flavel in the short term.
It’s rather a sad end to what had been a pretty distinguished career, turning around quite a prestigious part of the business, restoring its fortunes certainly financially.
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