David Thorburn (banker)

Joining the Clydesdale Bank as a trainee graduate in 1978 and moving to the Trustee Savings Bank, Scotland, in 1984, Thorburn returned to the Clydesdale in 1993 as a senior manager.

In April 2002 he joined the executive team at Clydesdale Bank. In 2005, Yorkshire Bank was merged into Clydesdale. Thorburn was appointed as chief executive in 2011,^[2] and for a time his signature appeared on Clydesdale banknotes.^[1][3][4] He stepped down from these posts in January 2015, at a time when the parent National Australia Bank was considering options for exiting the UK.^[2]

From July 2015 to March 2018, Thorburn was an independent member of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Committee,^[5] stepping down a few months before the end of his three-year term to take up a non-executive directorship at the retail division of Barclays Bank, where he chaired the risk committee.^[6] From May 2016, he also sat on the global governance council at the multinational accounting firm Ernst & Young.^[7]

He was appointed as chairman of the board at Coventry Building Society, the UK's second largest building society,^[8] in April 2022.^[9]

David Thorburn is a former vice-chairman and chairman of the Confederation of British Industry in Scotland and a past president of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland. He is also a former director of Scottish Financial Enterprise and in May 2009 was invited by the First Minister of Scotland to head the team to develop a new Skills Gateway for the financial services industry in Scotland. ^[10][11][12]