JAMES R. CROSBY

The CEO of HBOS Plc from 1998 to 2006. Crosby trained as an actuary and joined Halifax Building Society in 1994 as a managing director. Through the acquisition of two insurance companies, Crosby helped turn Halifax from a mortgage bank into a broader financial services company.

In 2001, Crosby engineered a merger between Halifax and the Bank of Scotland, creating HBOS. HBOS was a leader in its sector in 2003, although it was experiencing financial trouble in 2002 from bad loans. The bank ended up collapsing in 2008, and Lloyds TSB, one of HBOS’s main competitors, took over HBOS in 2009 to form Lloyds Banking Group.

Crosby was born in 1956 in Britain and began his career in 1977 as a fund manager with life insurance company Scottish Amicable. He has also been an adviser to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Crosby stepped down from HBOS in 2006; he was also forced to resign from Britain's Financial Services Authority, which regulates the UK's financial service providers, after being accused of firing the head of HBOS's risk team for his acting as a whistleblower and warning that the bank was engaging in excessively risky behavior. Crosby was criticized for the high pension he was due to receive despite the crisis at HBOS.