Black belt Walton departs Yorkshire Bank

Patrick Walton, managing partner of the Leeds financial services centre, departed on October 31 after six years’ service.

Mr Walton is well known in the regional business community.

He is a former chairman of the Financial Leeds lobby group and sat on the Labour government’s Northern Way steering group for five years.

He also served as a board member at Yorkshire Forward’s innovation company.

He told the Yorkshire Post: “I leave behind a fantastic team of people and wish them all the best.”

Mr Walton has set up a company called Lynden Associates, offering strategy and funding advice as well as fitness and self-defence training.

The career banker, who has a second dan black belt in karate, described the new business as “a dream come true”.

He said: “It is an opportunity to work with great people and great companies.”

He recently qualified as a karate instructor and plans to travel to Japan next year to train with an 82-year-old karate master.

Mr Walton previously worked at Bank of Scotland as director of corporate banking. He started his career at Barclays in 1974 and worked up to director.

It is understood that he left Yorkshire Bank as part of its deep restructuring exercise.

Mr Walton follows Kath Myers and Gary Lumby out of the business. Ms Myers, a divisional director at National Australia Group Europe, left in the summer after 33 years’ service.

Mr Lumby stood down from his role as director of small business for Yorkshire and Clydesdale Banks last November to take on a part-time ambassadorial role.

The bank and its parent Clydesdale are shedding 1,400 jobs over the next three years and retrenching to their Northern and Scottish heartlands.

The Australian-owned business has been struggling with the economic downturn and plunging commercial property values.

It has also had to set aside £220m to compensate customers for mis-selling payment protection insurance.

Directors had their annual bonuses scrapped this month after the lender admitted business performance is “not where it needs to be”.

Annual accounts revealed a worse than originally expected statutory loss of £470m for Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks.

A spokesman declined to comment on Mr Walton’s departure.