Sir Win Bischoff, the veteran banker, has emerged as favourite to be handed the chairmanship of Lloyds Banking Group. The former chairman of Citigroup would replace Sir Victor Blank, who agreed to resign in the wake of fierce criticism of the takeover last year of HBOS, the mortgage lender.

Sir Victor has said he will stay until next year, but investors have called on him to step down earlier.

If named chairman, Sir Win, who left Citigroup in February, would be unlikely to get rid of Eric Daniels, Lloyds chief executive, according to The Financial Times.

Lloyds refused on comment.

Lord Davies, the Trade Minister and former Standard Chartered chief, turned down the job when offered it by the bank’s board and John Kingman, head of UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the body that owns the Government’s 43 per cent stake in Lloyds.

A City grandee, Sir Win has also been linked with the chairman’s post at Standard Chartered, to replace the acting chairman, John Peace, and with the chairmanship of UKFI.

Lloyds announced plans to cut a further 2,100 jobs yesterday in a move that has been condemned by unions as an “astonishing, systematic slashing of staff ”. The latest cuts are the biggest reduction in the workforce since Lloyds took over HBOS in January and takes the total cull by Lloyds since it acquired HBOS, and was bailed out by the taxpayer, to more than 7,000 jobs.

Analysts believe that thousands more jobs will go among the joint 140,000 workforce as Lloyds strives to hit its target of £1.5 billion in annual cost savings. The latest cuts include 150 posts in West Yorkshire, 100 in Birmingham and 350 in Scotland. The redundancies will be implemented over the next three years and will be in processing and the wholesale banking division. Lloyds said that 700 of the cuts would be achieved by laying off contract and agency staff and by people leaving voluntarily. It said that the move followed plans to streamline its group and wholesale operations.

The bank pledged not to move any more permanent roles offshore.

Rob MacGregor, of Unite, said that the union had been “astonished” by the Lloyds decision. “As a taxpayer-supported organisation, real questions need to be asked as to how far this bank can be allowed to go in this systematic slashing of staff,” he said.

The UKFI said: “This is pure speculation – UKFI has not asked Sir Win Bischoff or anyone else to be chairman. The process to select a new chairman is being run by Lloyds and is still ongoing”.

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