One of the UK Treasury’s most highly experienced officials is leaving the civil service after missing out on a top Whitehall post.
John Kingman, who is filling in as acting permanent secretary to the Treasury after Sir Nicholas Macpherson stepped down last month, is expected to return to the private sector later this year.
According to the Financial Times, which first reported Kingman’s move, he will leave the Treasury at the end of July to take up a mixture of commercial roles and non-executive posts.
The news follows the appointment of Kingman’s long-time colleague Tom Scholar to succeed Macpherson. The two were thought to be in a head-to-head battle for the top civil service job.
As the prime minister’s principal adviser on the European Union, Scholar helped David Cameron hammer out his EU deal and will not take up the permanent secretary post at the Treasury until after the referendum.
Kingman, who was second permanent secretary to the Treasury before becoming acting head, has held several roles in the private and public sectors and was a key figure in the bank bailouts during the financial crisis.
Early in his career he worked at the Financial Times and BP. At the Treasury he helped oversee the rescue of Northern Rock in 2007 and 2008 and then became chief executive of UK Financial Investments, the body set up to look after the taxpayers’ stake in the bailed-out banks.
Kingman later joined the investment bank Rothschild, where he was global co-head of its financial institutions group from 2010 before returning to the Treasury in 2012 as one of two second permanent secretaries, the other being Scholar.
The Treasury declined to comment.
