LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Brian Pitman, the veteran banker who helped transform Lloyds TSB into one of Europe's largest banks, has died at age 78, the British Bankers Association said.

The banker, hailed by industry insiders as a "giant," died Thursday after suffering a heart attack earlier this week.

Pitman joined Lloyds in 1952, serving as chief executive officer from 1983 to 1997, and chairman from 1997 to 2001. He was responsible for the merger of Lloyds and TSB in 1995, turning a small bank in one of Europe's biggest.

Between 1983 and when he retired in 2001, Lloyds' market capitalization increased to GBP40 billion from GBP1 billion.

"Can I take all the credit for this extended successful run? Of course not," he wrote in 2003 in the Harvard Business Review. "But I did learn a few things about the challenges and rewards of focusing a company on shareholder value. The most important one is that value-based management, as it has come to be called, involves much more than putting in place some faddish new performance metric or accounting method."

Lloyds TSB became Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LYG) after it took over ailing mortgage lender HBOS during the financial crisis in 2008.

Lloyds Banking Group CEO Eric Daniels praised Pitman, saying that "Sir Brian was a truly inspirational leader, who contributed an enormous amount to Lloyds over many years. He was a towering figure and was involved in many of the major changes that have shaped the banking sector."

More recently, Pitman was the chairman of Virgin Money, the financial arm of Richard Branson's business empire.

His appointment in January was seen as essential for Virgin Money, a new entrant in U.K.'s banking market, to quickly gain respect and trust in the industry.

"He was the giant of his profession," Branson said in a statement. "The most respected banker of his generation and the generations that followed."

Pitman is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.

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