Sir David Walker named chairman of Barclays

Sir David Walker, the City grandee who led the 2009 review into corporate governance, was last night named the new chairman of Barclays.

The former Bank of England deputy governor will join the bank on 1 September and replace Marcus Agius as chairman in November on £750,000 a year for a four-day week.

He said his immediate priority will be to find a replacement for chief executive Bob Diamond, who resigned last month in the wake of the Libor-fixing scandal. It cost the bank £290 million in fines from regulators in the UK and US.

Walker, a senior adviser to Morgan Stanley International, also conducted a review of the Financial Services Authority’s report into the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland.

l An MP has called on Westminster to investigate American banks in the wake of a US regulator’s claims that Standard Chartered breached sanctions against Iran.

John Mann, a Treasury select committee member, said the UK should probe the operations of US financial institutions in the same way senators have carried out inquiries into British banks.

“We should be tackling not just our banks but the American banks,” the Bassetlaw MP said.