HM Treasury has announced that it will appoint Charles Randell as the new chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority shortly.

Randell is an external member of the Prudential Regulation Committee of the Bank of England and a non-executive board member of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He will take on the five-year job on 1 April.

Randell worked at Slaughter and May from 1980 to 2013, becoming a partner in 1989. He specialised in corporate finance law, and worked on financial stability and bank restructuring assignments.

During the carnage of the global financial crash he advised HM Treasury about the resolutions of Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley and the Icelandic banks; the Government's investments in RBS and the merger of Lloyds and HBOS; and the Asset Protection Scheme. He also advised the Portuguese Ministry of Finance about the recapitalisation of the Portuguese banking sector.

Randell is also a visiting fellow in financial services regulation at Queen Mary University of London.