Hector Sants, former chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, is to join Barclays in a role working to improve the bank’s international reputation with governments and regulators. 

The Barclays chief executive, Antony Jenkins, said:

Relationships with our regulators and governments around the world are obviously also of critical importance to us. 

With a huge wealth of private- and public-sector experience and having most recently led one of the world's pre-eminent regulatory authorities, I can think of no more suitably qualified person than Hector Sants to take on these challenges.

Sants, who was widely reported to be in discussions to join the accountancy firm Deloitte, resigned from the FSA in March after five years in the top role.

The appointment ends a difficult year for Barclays. In July, the then chief executive, Bob Diamond, and chairman, Marcus Agius, resigned after the bank was forced to pay a record £290m in June to regulators in the US and UK for manipulating the inter-bank lending rates Libor and Euribor.

This story can be read in full at economia.