George Osborne, the former chancellor, has emerged as a shock contender to become the next chairman of HSBC Holdings, one of the world’s top banking jobs.

Sky News can exclusively reveal that Mr Osborne, who was chancellor from 2010 until 2016, was approached during the summer about becoming the successor to Sir Mark Tucker.

This weekend, City sources said that Mr Osborne was one of three remaining candidates in the frame to take on the chairmanship of the London-headquartered lender.

Naguib Kheraj, the City veteran who was previously finance director of Barclays and deputy chairman of Standard Chartered, is also in contention.

The other candidate is said to be Kevin Sneader, the former McKinsey boss who now works for Goldman Sachs in Asia.

It was unclear this weekend whether other names remained in contention for the job, or whether the board regarded any as the frontrunner at this stage.

Mr Osborne’s inclusion on the shortlist is a major surprise, given his lack of public company chairmanship experience.

With a market capitalisation of almost £190bn, HSBC is the second-largest FTSE-100 company, after drugs giant AstraZeneca.

The bank has been looking for a replacement for Sir Mark for nearly a year, but has run what external critics have labelled a chaotic succession process.

Sir Mark, who has returned to the helm of insurer AIA as its non-executive chairman, stepped down at the end of September, but remains an adviser to the board.

Brendan Nelson, the former KPMG vice-chairman, became interim chair of HSBC last month and will remain in place until a permanent successor is found.

If he got the job, Mr Osborne would be a radical choice for one of Britain’s biggest corporate jobs.

Since stepping down as an MP, he has assumed a varied professional life, becoming editor of the London Evening Standard for three years, a post he left in 2020.

Since then, he has become a partner at Robey Warshaw, the merger advisory firm recently acquired by Evercore, where he remains in place.

If he were to become HSBC chairman, he would be obliged to give up that role.

Mr Osborne also chairs the British Museum, is an adviser to the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and is chairman of Lingotto Investment Management, which is controlled by Italy’s billionaire Agnelli business dynasty.

During his chancellorship, Mr Osborne and then prime minister David Cameron fostered closer links with Beijing in a bid to boost trade ties between the two countries.

“Of course, there will be ups and downs in the road ahead, but by sticking together we can make this a golden era for the UK-China relationship for many years to come,” he said in a speech in Shanghai in 2015.

Mr Osborne was also reported to have intervened on HSBC’s behalf as it sought to avoid prosecution in the US in 2012 on money laundering charges.

The much cooler current relationship between the UK – and many of its allies – and China will be the most significant geopolitical context faced by Sir Mark’s successor as HSBC chairman.

While there is little doubt about his intellectual bandwidth for the role, it would be rare for such a plum corporate job to go to someone with such a spartan public company boardroom pedigree.

His lack of direct banking experience would also be expected to come under close scrutiny from regulators.

HSBC’s shares have soared over the last year, rising by more than 50%, despite the headwinds posed by President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs regime.

When he was appointed, Mr Tucker became the first outsider to take the post in the bank’s 152-year history – and which has a big presence on the high street thanks to its acquisition of the Midland Bank in 1992.

He oversaw a rapid change of leadership, appointing bank veteran John Flint to replace Stuart Gulliver as chief executive.

The transition did not work out, however, with Mr Tucker deciding to sack Mr Flint after just 18 months.

He was replaced on an interim basis by Noel Quinn in the summer of 2018, with that change becoming permanent in April 2020.

Mr Quinn spent a further four years in the post before deciding to step down, and in July 2024 he was succeeded by Georges Elhedery, a long-serving executive in HSBC’s markets unit and more recently the bank’s chief financial officer.

The new chief’s first big move in the top job was to unveil a sweeping reorganisation of HSBC that sees it reshaped into eastern markets and western markets businesses.

He also decided to merge its commercial and investment banking operations into a single division.

The restructuring, which Mr Elhedery said would “result in a simpler, more dynamic, and agile organisation” has drawn a mixed reaction from analysts, although it has not interrupted a strong run for the stock.

During Sir Mark’s tenure, HSBC continued to exit non-core markets, selling operations in countries such as Canada and France as it sharpened its focus on its Asian operations.

HSBC has been contacted for comment, while Mr Osborne could not be reached for comment.

In late September, HSBC said in a statement: “The process to select the permanent HSBC Group Chair, led by Ann Godbehere, Senior Independent Director, is ongoing.

“The company will provide further updates on this succession process in due course.”

The future ownership of the Daily Telegraph has been plunged back into crisis after RedBird Capital Partners abandoned its proposed £500m takeover.

Sky News has learnt that a consortium led by RedBird and including the UAE-based investor IMI has formally withdrawn its offer to buy the right-leaning newspaper titles.

In a statement issued to Sky News, a RedBird Capital Partners spokesman confirmed: “RedBird has today withdrawn its bid for the Telegraph Media Group.

“We remain fully confident that the Telegraph and its world-class team have a bright future ahead of them and we will work hard to help secure a solution which is in the best interests of employees and readers.”

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The move comes nearly two-and-a-half years after the Telegraph’s future was plunged into doubt when its lenders seized control from the Barclay family, its long-standing proprietors.

RedBird IMI then extended financing which gave it a call option to own the newspapers, but its original proposal was thwarted by objections to foreign state ownership of British national newspapers.

A new deal was then stitched together which included funding from Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and Sir Leonard Blavatnik, the billionaire owner of sports streaming platform DAZN.

Under that deal, Abu Dhabi-based IMI would have taken a 15% stake in Telegraph Media Group.

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In recent weeks, RedBird principal Gerry Cardinale had reiterated his desire to own the titles despite apparently having been angered by reporting by Telegraph journalists which explored links between RedBird and Chinese state influences.

Unrest from the Telegraph newsroom is said to have been one of the main factors in RedBird’s decision to withdraw its offer.

The collapse of the deal means a further auction of the titles is now likely to take place in the new year.

Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have scrapped plans to break their manifesto pledge and raise income tax rates in a massive U-turn less than two weeks from the budget.

The decision, first reported in the Financial Times, comes after a bruising few days which has brought about a change of heart in Downing Street.

Read more: How No 10 plunged itself into crisis

I understand Downing Street has backed down amid fears about the backlash from disgruntled MPs and voters.

The Treasury and Number 10 declined to comment.

The decision is a massive about-turn. In a news conference last week, the chancellor appeared to pave the way for manifesto-breaking tax rises in the budget on 26 November.

She spoke of difficult choices and insisted she could neither increase borrowing nor cut spending in order to stabilise the economy, telling the public “everyone has to play their part”.

The decision to backtrack was communicated to the Office for Budget Responsibility on Wednesday in a submission of “major measures”, according to the Financial Times.

The chancellor will now have to fill an estimated £30bn black hole with a series of narrower tax-raising measures and is also expected to freeze income tax thresholds for another two years beyond 2028, which should raise about £8bn.

Tory shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith said: “We’ve had the longest ever run-up to a budget, damaging the economy with uncertainty, and yet – with just days to go – it is clear there is chaos in No 10 and No 11.”

How did we get here?

For weeks, the government has been working up options to break the manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT on working people.

I was told only this week the option being worked up was to do a combination of tax rises and action on the two-child benefit cap in order for the prime minister to be able to argue that in breaking his manifesto pledges, he is trying his hardest to protect the poorest in society and those “working people” he has spoken of so endlessly.

But days ago, officials and ministers were working on a proposal to lift the basic rate of income tax – perhaps by 2p – and then simultaneously cut national insurance contributions for those on the basic rate of income tax (those who earn up to £50,000 a year).

That way the chancellor can raise several billion in tax from those with the “broadest shoulders” – higher-rate taxpayers and pensioners or landlords, while also trying to protect “working people” earning salaries under £50,000 a year.

The chancellor was also going to take action on the two-child benefit cap in response to growing demand from the party to take action on child poverty. It is unclear whether those plans will now be shelved given the U-turn on income tax.

A rough week for the PM

The change of plan comes after the prime minister found himself engulfed in a leadership crisis after his allies warned rivals that he would fight any attempted post-budget coup.

It triggered a briefing war between Wes Streeting and anonymous Starmer allies attacking the health secretary as the chief traitor.

Read more: Is Starmer ‘in office but not in power’?

The prime minister has since apologised to Mr Streeting, who I am told does not want to press for sackings in No 10 in the wake of the briefings against him.

But the saga has further damaged Sir Keir and increased concerns among MPs about his suitability to lead Labour into the next general election.

Insiders clearly concluded that the ill mood in the party, coupled with the recent hits to the PM’s political capital, makes manifesto-breaking tax rises simply too risky right now.

But it also adds to a sense of chaos, given the chancellor publicly pitch-rolled tax rises in last week’s news conference.