Terry Murden: Lloyds ship is in troubled waters, and now the pilot has left the bridge

FOR starters, let’s not play down the seriousness of stress. Anyone who’s suffered from any sort of physical or mental pressure knows full well that it’s a potentially devastating condition.

The questions that have to be asked about the “fatigue” suffered by Lloyds Banking Group boss Antonio Horta-Osorio concern his general well-being, his full-on approach to an already demanding job, and whether he’s likely to return.

Some say we’re asking too much of our top bosses, big salaries or not. These guys are paid well, but are expected to be superhuman. Horta-Osorio’s problem was that he believed it. He tried to micromanage a business bigger than anything he’d previously taken on and it got the better of him.

He was certainly a man in a hurry, a turbo-charged chief executive who arrived seven months ago on a mission to restore Lloyds to its former greatness. It’s proved his undoing. Trying to push through change too quickly was a mistake and his big review, announced in June, was undone by the eurozone crisis that also blew another big hole in the already ailing share price.

He also piled pressure on others, insisting on hugely-demanding targets that have given many of his staff cause to claim they too would like six to eight weeks off in order to recover from the shock of seeing the once thoroughbred Black Horse reduced to an also-ran with a major handicap.

One Lloyds branch manager rang me in a rage yesterday morning on learning of the chief executive’s leave of absence, saying that in more than 30 years with the bank he’d never known such a demanding regime.

The current mantra was “cut, cut, cut,” he said and frontline staff were under orders to sell products or face improvement training.

While growing the bank organically, Horta-Osorio tested himself with his desire to accelerate the sale of assets ordered by the European Commission. The 2013 deadline seemed too distant to the new chief executive and he didn’t want it hanging over the bank while he was trying to build a new company. So he demanded bidders submit offers by this summer with the intention of getting a preferred buyer in place by the year end.

His absence will now interrupt that process as well as the wider restructuring which has also been ramped up and has no doubt contributed to the stresses felt by everyone at Lloyds.

In the seven months since he took over, Horta-Osorio may have made few friends among those being asked to raise their game, to accept cutbacks and push ever hard to achieve sales targets, but he’s won some supporters in the City for tackling the big problems which partly explains the sharp fall in the share price. It was also down due to the uncertainty now hanging over Lloyds which is regarded at best as a (very) long-term recovery play.

His absence is compounded by the fact that chief financial officer Tim Tookey, who takes temporary charge, is himself leaving in February with no replacement lined up. This raises questions about the decision to put him in the role and also about the fragility of the senior management.

In Horta-Osorio’s quest to create the new model he has cleared out the old guard, including company veterans such as Scotland and insurance boss Archie Kane, and introduced a flatter management structure.

This has left the bank starved of potential successors. There are suggestions that chairman Win Bischoff delays his own retirement plans to launch a search for a new chief executive. One potential internal candidate is operations director Mark Fisher, while some believe Bischoff himself should be more hands on.

One way or another, an early indication as to Horta-Osorio’s own plans for returning would help steady the ship.

Indictment of UK businesses as tally of unpaid bills tops £33bn

NOT getting paid for work done is a main reason why companies fail. It’s been a long-running sore with smaller firms and the self-employed who feel they are bullied by the bigger firms into waiting for their money. With no cash flowing into the business, they often find themselves unable to carry on. Even good businesses with sound management and excellent products can come a cropper.

Campaigns for legislation, including a recent move by the Scots businessman Ken Lewandowski, have so far failed to produce the sort of framework that forces firms to pay on time.

And all the while, the problem gets worse. So bad that unpaid bills are now standing at a record £33.6 billion. That’s a shocking indictment of Britain’s businesses, though it is an inevitable side-effect of tough times when every company fears non-payment and everyone prefers to see the money in their bank balance rather than someone else’s.