Just 10 months after he took the post at Barclays in the wake of the LIBOR-rigging scandal that rocked the City, Hector Sants, former chief of the old UK financial regulator, has left due to stress and exhaustion.

Just 10 months after he took the post at Barclays in the wake of the LIBOR-rigging scandal that rocked the City, Hector Sants, former chief of the old UK financial regulator, has left due to stress and exhaustion, the UK-listed bank said today.

Sants held the post of head of compliance and government and regulatory relations at the bank. Previously, he had been the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, the former UK watchdog.

At the same time, chief operations and technology officer at [tag|Barclays|]Barclays[/tag], Shaygan Kheradpir, has resigned, the bank said in a statement.

“Hector Sants has been on sick leave since the beginning of October, suffering from stress and exhaustion. He has concluded that he will not be able to return to work in the near term. Consequently he has decided to resign from Barclays and not return from sick leave,” the statement said.

Kheradpir is leaving the bank to take on a role as CEO for a company based in the US, it said.

An internal and external search will be launched for both posts. In the meantime, Allen Meyer, head of compliance, corporate and investment banking will act as interim head of compliance and government and regulatory relations. Darryl West, Barclays’ chief information officer, will act as interim group chief operations and technology officer. In these posts both will join the executive committee and report to group CEO, Antony Jenkins.

Sants’ departure will be a blow to a bank that announced his arrival in the wake of one of the biggest financial scandals to have hit the global banking industry in years. The appointment was seen very much in the industry as part of how this bank was battling to recover from the LIBOR affair. Barclays had seen the resignation of Robert Diamond from the CEO post, and other senior executives resigned, over the bank’s involvement in rigging of interbank interest rates. A number of other major banks, such as UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland, have also been fined and punished for the rigging of interbank rates. The scandal has led to fresh calls for overhauls to bank compliance systems, as well as calls to reforms to how financial market benchmark rates, such as LIBOR, are set.

“Hector has been a great colleague on the group executive committee. Although only with us for ten months, he has made significant progress towards creating a world class compliance function at Barclays and in improving our relationships with Regulators and Governments. I know my colleagues will join me in expressing our appreciation to Hector, as well as wishing him a speedy recovery,” Jenkins said in the statement.

As for Kheradpir, he added: “Shaygan has made a huge contribution to our innovation and technology agenda and the elements of Transform which his team are delivering have real momentum. He has infused his colleagues in operations and technology with a spirit of creative thinking and exploration which Barclays will continue to benefit from long after he has moved on.”

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