When Sir Win Bischoff and Eric Daniels were seen deep in conversation at the Chelsea Flower Show in May, tongues started to wag.

It was the day that Sir Victor Blank had been ousted as chairman of Lloyds Banking Group (albeit with a 2010 leaving date) and already attention had turned to his possible successor, with Sir Win, the former Citigroup chairman, one of the few credible names cited by City pundits. (The Financial Times’s People column even recorded the encounter among the tulips.)