Former bank bosses rehired

Banks have lost tens of billions of pounds over the past few years, so it's perhaps a little surprising that men held responsible for the credit crunch have found gainful employment at some of Britain's biggest companies.Back in May, Richard Burrows apologised for Bank of Ireland's £6.2bn full-year pre-tax loss and chose to stand down as governor of the bank."Accountability for these losses must be taken at the top," said Burrows, who eventually left the Irish company last month following a turbulent period which saw the bank relying on state funding to weather the downturn.But today, Lucky Strike cigarettes maker British American Tobacco picked the former chief executive of Irish Distillers, co-chief executive of Pernod Ricard and current non-executive director of Carlsberg as its new chairman.He'll take up his new role in November when current chairman Jan Du Plessis leaves to focus on chairing mining giant Rio Tinto.Other high profile bank chiefs, previously thought unemployable following the finance sector crash, have also got lucky.Andy Hornby, who led HBOS until his forced resignation in January following the takeover by Lloyds Banking, is now boss of private equity-owned Alliance Boots. HBOS lost £10.8bn in 2008.Sir Win Bischoff has also got a new job. The chairman of Schroders then of Citigroup has been confirmed as Lloyds' new chairman, replacing the outgoing Sir Victor Blank. City veteran Bischoff will take up his role at Lloyds, 43%-owned by the government, on 15 September. He was at Citi when the bank announced a fourth quarter loss of $8.29bn and 2008 deficit of $18.72bn. He left in February this year after chairing the bank since December 2007. It received a £326bn bail-out from the US Treasury in November last year after suffering huge losses due to the global financial crisis. Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin has not been as fortunate. The controversial Scot, in charge as the bank plunged to an annual loss of more than £24bn, has just returned from the French Riviera to his £3m Edinburgh home. There's talk of an image makeover for the 50-year-old who walked away with a £703,000 annual pension, later cut to £342,000, but it will probably take more than a creative image consultant to get Sir Fred back in the boardroom.