IN the corner of Bryan Sanderson’s elegant, third-floor City of London sanctum, just behind his antique desk, there is a grandfather clock marking time. Tick. Tock.

What it really marks, of course, is that time, in this chairman’s office, is meant to stand still — as one would expect at a crusty old bank. The clock would drive most of us barmy.

“Oh, I quite like it really,” says Sanderson. “It was here when I arrived.” Then a playful smile twitches behind his clipped moustache. The Sanderson smile, half jocular, half calculating, is clearly one to watch.

As is the Sanderson CV. Thirty-six years at BP, then unleashed as chairman of Bupa, chairman of the football club Sunderland plc, head of the government’s Learning and Skills Council and now, since May, chairman of Standard Chartered, the medium-sized bank that’s small over here and very large in Asia and Africa. But what does a former oil boss know about banking?

“Actually it’s not as different as you think,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Oil is pretty much like dollars. There’s an awful lot of finance attached to it. And much of what I do is about relationships. The people I meet in Asia are exactly the people I used to meet with BP.”

Six months into the job, that contacts book is already well-thumbed, you would imagine. Last week Standard Chartered bought a stake in the state-owned Permata bank in Indonesia. More partnerships and acquisitions are expected soon in Africa and China.

Inside the bank, Sanderson has already rejigged the board — three long-standing directors were asked to step down. “It’s my prerogative,” smiles Sanderson, coolly. “Anyway, the board was non-compliant (with good corporate governance).”

Reassurance up front, a certain ruthlessness behind — that’s how banks like to do it. Sanderson’s BP pragmatism, his Far East network, his facility with tricky regimes, even his connections with British politicians (his youthful ambition was to be a Labour MP) show there is more logic in his appointment than might first meet the eye.

Sanderson has certainly got his timing right. Standard Chartered — £2.5 billion revenue, 30,000 staff, 500 offices in 50 countries and a 150-year history in emerging markets — is on a roll. Its 2004 interim results showed record first-half profits (up 52% to £601m) and a rising return on equity (19%). The bank has already declared its intention to follow that with careful expansion in its key overseas markets. Only the occasional suggestion that a huge rival such as Citigroup or HSBC might gobble it up mars the view.

Sanderson, 64 last week, is characteristically nonchalant at the prospect. “I think a takeover bid is unlikely. We have to perform, of course, but we are very expensive, and if one bank has a go, so will others, and the price will go even higher.”

And likewise any suggestion that he timed his entry into banking well. “I never plan anything meticulously in life,” he shrugs.

Old BP colleagues scoff at that one. “High personal standards, no fuss, real delegation and high expectations, that’s Bryan,” sums up Stock Exchange chairman Chris Gibson-Smith, another former BP high flyer. “And the key is: he thinks, then he acts.”

But playing vague is all part of the Sanderson charm. Medium-height, chunky, his spotless pinstripe suits and butter-smooth manner undercut by occasional Geordie directness, he is a convivial host and practised listener, as at ease entertaining African heads of state or members of Labour’s northeast mafia as he is prowling the directors’ boxes of leading football clubs. His Standard Chartered chief executive, Mervyn Davies, is a director at Tottenham, and as Sanderson’s “other team” after Sunderland is West Ham, he is not short of options on a Saturday.