Clive Briault, the most senior Financial Services Authority executive charged with handling the Northern Rock crisis, is to leave the watchdog by mutual agreement.

His role as managing director of the retail business will be taken over immediately by David Kenmir, current chief operating officer, who will take charge of the retail operations until a permanent replacement is found.

Mr Briault is the sixth head to roll from the seven-strong FSA team monitoring Northern Rock before its collapse. It is the FSA’s fourth management shake-up since the nationalisation of the Newcastle-based lender.

Hector Sants, FSA chief executive, said in a note to staff this morning that Mr Briault was leaving the regulator “by mutual consent” at the end of next month.

Mr Briault, who came to the FSA from the Bank of England, was last year named as a potential candidate for the FSA's top job, which was taken by Mr Sants.

Earlier this month, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Times, reported exclusively that the FSA was forced to admit that five of the FSA supervisors who were working closely on Northern Rock before its implosion last August have left.

The FSA, the body responsible for ensuring that UK banks have balance sheets that are sufficiently strong and liquid, has come under fire for failing to spot the fatal flaw in Northern Rock's business model and exacerbating the difficulties that followed.

In January, a report by the Treasury committee found the FSA guilty of a “systematic failure of duty” over the Rock crisis, adding that the financial watchdog should have spotted the bank's "reckless" business plan.

Northern Rock's extreme dependence for its funding on the wholesale money markets, rather than on depositors, proved a catastrophic weakness when the credit crunch hit last summer, leading to the first run on a British bank for more than a century.

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