Lord Myners, the minister appointed to clean up the City, is so disenchanted by bankers’ greed and self-aggrandisement that he is planning to become a theology student.

Myners, who was blamed for failing to block Sir Fred Goodwin’s £16.9m pension payoff,and has spent the past few months trying to persuade the City to curb its casino culture, has attacked the “troubling absence of clear moral purpose” in banking.

He amassed an estimated £30m fortune himself in business and financial services before joining Gordon Brown’s “government of all the talents” last year as financial services secretary. Several other “goats” have already resigned.

This weekend Myners said he no longer intended to return to the City full time when he steps down as a minister. He told The Sunday Times he was worried he may have “neglected” the moral purpose of life and was “increasingly exercised and concerned with the fact that we have compromised our lives”.

“This is very evident in the financial community – that money has become everything. People have lost their sense of purpose. The absence of clear moral purpose is something that is very troubling,” he said.

Myners, a Methodist, said he was “not particularly observant” and had “not been a regular churchgoer”. However, he said he would like to study comparative theology to see how different faiths treated moral questions. Asked whether he planned to be ordained, he said it was “far too premature” to say, but added, “you never know”.

Myners rose from humble beginnings. He spent his early years in a children’s home in Cornwall. He was adopted at the age of three by a butcher and a hairdresser, and won a scholarship to a Methodist school.

He started work as a teacher in London but switched to financial journalism. A career in the City led to him becoming a highly-paid fund manager. He is a former chairman of Marks & Spencer.

He was brought into government last October to help rescue the banking system, but has become frustrated by the determination of many in the City once again to extract maximum short-term rewards.

Earlier this year he said: “I have met more masters of the universe than I would like to, people who were grossly overrewarded.”

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