London: Indian-origin Shriti Vadera has been appointed as chairman of Santander UK, becoming the first woman to head a major British bank. 52-year-old Vadera, former minister in the UK's finance ministry, will join the board of Santander UK as joint deputy chairman in January before succeeding Terence Burns in March next year. She will also join a very exclusive club of just three FTSE 100 firms, listed on the London Stock Exchange with the highest market capitalisation, with women as their chair. Vadera was a Labour minister in the Cabinet Office, Business Department and International Development Department from 2007 to 2009 and served in the House of Lords.

Baroness Vadera, who is a Labour peer in the House of Lords, spent 14 years at the investment bank UBS and eight years as an adviser in the UK Treasury under former Prime Minister Gordon Brown during the height of the Eurozone financial crisis. "We're proud and excited to welcome Shriti Vadera to Santander. Her deep expertise in UK and global economies as well as her banking experience add to her credentials as a strong, independent non-executive chairman," Ana Botin, chair of Spain-headquartered parent firm Banco Santander, said in a statement on Saturday.

Vadera left the UK government in 2009 to take up a job with the G20 group, an international forum for the governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies. She has been on leave from the Lords since 2011, when she returned to corporate life, taking non-executive roles at companies like BHP Billiton and AstraZeneca. Vadera hails from a wealthy tea plantation family from Uganda, where she was born. Her family left the country when she was 10 and was raised in India and the UK. At Santander UK, the Oxford graduate will be replacing Burns, an economist who is retiring after chairing the bank for over a decade.