, Glasgow Joining the
Clydesdale Bank as a trainee graduate in 1978 and moving to the
Trustee Savings Bank, Scotland, in 1984, Thorburn returned to the Clydesdale in 1993 as a senior manager. In April 2002 he joined the executive team at Clydesdale Bank. In 2005,
Yorkshire Bank was merged into Clydesdale. Thorburn was appointed as chief executive in 2011, and for a time his signature appeared on Clydesdale banknotes. He stepped down from these posts in January 2015, at a time when the parent
National Australia Bank was considering options for exiting the UK. stepping down a few months before the end of his three-year term to take up a non-executive directorship at the retail division of
Barclays Bank, where he chaired the risk committee. From May 2016, he also sat on the global governance council at the multinational accounting firm
Ernst & Young. He was appointed as chairman of the board at
Coventry Building Society, the UK's second largest
building society, in April 2022. == Other appointments ==