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Bloomberg
Whitbread Plc Chief Executive Officer Alison Brittain has been approached as a candidate to succeed Ross McEwan as boss of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Group Plc, adding to signs the lender is broadening its search as it seeks a new leader.
Brittain, who has run the British hotel and restaurant operator for nearly four years, is one of several candidates who have been sounded out for the role, people familiar with the matter said, declining to be identified. She wasn’t interested in the position.
The state-owned lender has been contacting the UK’s top bankers as McEwan takes on another turnaround job at a scandal-hit Australian bank. A decision is expected by RBS on its next CEO within weeks.
Alison Rose, deputy chief executive officer of its largest unit, has been widely regarded as the favorite, but other names have entered the frame this month after McEwan signed up to run National Australia Bank Ltd. The Financial Times said that RBS had approached HSBC Holdings Plc’s head of its UK retail bank, Ian Stuart.
RBS and Whitbread’s Brittain declined to comment.
Until 2015, Brittain headed retail banking at Lloyds Banking Group Plc, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, and like Rose, she was one of the most senior women in UK financial services. The 54-year-old started her career at Barclays Plc, where she worked for about 19 years before joining Banco Santander SA’s British arm.