Rumours of a takeover at B&B have eased, experts say

Christopher Rodrigues, who has led the bank since 1996, is leaving to head US credit card giant Visa International.

The boss of the former building society's core lending and savings business, Steven Crawshaw, will replace Mr Rodrigues at the end of March.

Under the leadership of Mr Rodrigues, Bradford & Bingley has pursued an aggressive expansion strategy since floating on the stock market in 2000.

'Amazing job'

Before joining West Yorkshire-based Bradford &Bingley, Mr Rodrigues was chief executive of travel company Thomas Cook and has also worked for American Express.

"You can see why Christopher Rodrigues has left, as he has been offered an amazing job with Visa," Bradford & Bingley chairman Rod Kent said.

Rodrigues will join Visa on 1 June, swapping the West Yorkshire town of Bingley for the US west coast city of San Francisco.

Bradford & Bingley is valued at about �2bn making it the 10th biggest of the UK's 11 listed banks by market value.

Rodrigues transformed Bradford & Bingley into a financial products broker through a string of acquisitions and some City analysts thought his next move might be to sell out to a bigger bank, like Barclays.

"There should be an easing of takeover speculation," Merrill Lynch analysts said on news of his departure.

Last month, Bradford & Bingley reported a 9% rise in annual pre-tax profits to �263m, compared with a figure of �240m in 2002.