Louis Taylor is making a habit of being parachuted in at troubled state lenders. For seven years before he took over as chief executive of the British Business Bank (BBB) last year, Taylor led UK Export Finance (UKEF), the state-owned credit agency that had been dragged into the high-profile Airbus bribery scandal.
The pan-European aircraft maker, which had been issued export credits by UKEF that were later cancelled, was alleged to have used a network of secret agents to pay bribes to foreign officials to land high-value overseas contracts between 2011 and 2015 – resulting in Airbus being fined by three countries. “We were highlighted as the kind of ‘catalyst’ for identifying all of that wrongdoing,” Taylor said of the case.
