Barclays surprised the City today as it revealed that Sir Nigel Rudd, its £200,000-a-year deputy chairman and a well-known corporate grandee, would be stepping down after 13 years.

Sir Nigel, a serial director and a well-known presence in UK company boardrooms, plans to concentrate on his new role at Invensys, the technology group, Barclays said.

Invensys, a £1.2 billion member of the FTSE 100, named Sir Nigel deputy chairman last month. He will take over as chairman in July.

The departure of Sir Nigel, 61, after the Barclays annual meeting in April will mark a setback for the bank and its chairman, Marcus Agius, the former Lazard banker.

Sir Nigel, knighted in 1996 after a career in manufacturing, presided over Barclays' audacious putative bid almost two years ago to buy ABN Amro, the Dutch bank.

Shareholders eventually forced the bank to abandon the planned takeover — conceding defeat to a consortium led by the Royal Bank of Scotland — but Sir Nigel's reputation as a dealmaker remained intact.

His appointment at Invensys immediately sparked speculation that a takeover of sorts would soon be in the works.

Sir Nigel, born in Derbyshire, holds 107,569 Barclays shares, worth £177,919.12 after a 10 per cent fall in the share price today.

Barclays would not say whether he planned to keep or sell them.

He sits on two committees at Barclays: the group brand and reputational committee and the bank corporate governance committee.

Barclays said that Mr Agius would be taking charge of the brand and reputation committee, but that it had yet to decide whether to recruit a deputy chairman.

Stepping down from Barclays and taking on Invensys means that Sir Nigel will have five directorships.

He is non-executive chairman of Invensys, as well as Pendragon, the motor dealer, and BAA, the airports group that owns Heathrow and Gatwick.

He is an independent director of BAE Systems, the defence manufacturer, and Sappi, a South African paper company.

Sir Nigel, who, at the age of 20, became Britain's youngest accountant, is a former chairman of Boots, the pharmacy chain.

As well as driving Boots into the arms of Alliance UniChem, an overseas rival, Sir Nigel remained in charge during the subsequent buyout bid by Stefano Pessina, the deputy chairman.

He also chaired Pilkington Glass in 2006, when the British glassmaker was sold to Nippon Sheet Glass, of Japan.

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