It was an open secret in the industry that Lloyd's chief executive Nick Prettejohn was desperately seeking new employment - it was even rumoured that he was eyeing up the top job at British Airways.

Backchat was also threatened with legal action if it wrote about his employment search.

Now he is leaving Lloyd's it seems only fair to point out that Prettejohn had signed up to headhunters Russell Reynolds over a year ago. Prettejohn asked RR's Simon Hearn to look for a job in banking for him. An HSBC banker said he saw Prettejohn's CV "cross his desk".

But one problem arose with his name. Many US banks contacted had problems with the Anglicised flat vowels of "Pret-john". Many Yanks pronounced it "Prat-john".

The view was that the US banking fraternity did not want a man whose name sounded like prat running their company. Shame.

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