Niall Booker

Niall Scott Kilgour Booker (born September 1958) is a Scottish banker who has been Chief Executive of The Co-operative Bank since May 2013. Previously, he spent 30 years working for HSBC, where his roles included country or regional heads in India, Thailand, the Middle East and North America. He has been described as a "clean-up expert", having helped HSBC in North America to recover from sub-prime lending losses and from money-laundering issues.

Booker was born in the Middle East, where his father was working for the British Colonial Service. He grew up in Scotland and went to Glenalmond College in Perthshire. He then studied history and law at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge. He has joint British and Irish citizenship as his wife is from Ireland and they have a house in County Sligo. Booker and his wife have two children. He joined the Governing Council of his school in 2012 after he retired from HSBC.

Booker joined HSBC in September 1979 after university and worked for the bank continuously until retiring in 2011. He was promoted through the ranks, becoming chief executive of HSBC India where he grew the Bank's market share. He moved to work in the United States in 2002 before heading up the Dubai-based HSBC Bank Middle East in 2006 where he oversaw record profits. In 2007, he moved to HSBC Finance Corporation, HSBC's US sub-prime lending business, which had been making heavy losses, initially as chief operating officer and then chief executive.

After successfully restructuring the sub-prime business he became chief executive of HSBC North America in August 2010 and joined HSBC's Group Management Board. He oversaw the reduction in the bank's US activities including the sale of its 195 Upstate New York branch network to First Niagara Financial Group in August 2011 for about $1 billion. He left HSBC in October 2011 as part of a management reshuffle, when the post was merged with the CEO of HSBC USA. He earned a reported £2m in his final year.

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