BankWest's chief information officer Tony Clasquin will leave at the end of the year - despite being only a few months into a 12-month review of the bank's IT operations.Clasquin was scheduled to speak at a major technology conference in Sydney yesterday morning where 900 of his peers from around the country were gathered. His presentation was still being advertised during the morning with Clasquin scheduled to speak on "Ensuring effective change management while replacing core systems". But the delegates who turned up to hear his address found themselves instead listening to a presentation by a couple of analysts from IT analyst Gartner.The Financial Review had reported that morning that Clasquin was leaving the bank, and that he had sent emails announcing the fact to colleagues and friends. However he had still been planning to speak at the conference, and a Gartner spokeswoman confirmed that "Tony Clasquin pulled out yesterday at the request of BankWest." A spokesman for BankWest, which was bought by the Commonwealth Bank last year for $2.1 billion, confirmed that Clasquin would be leaving the organisation at the end of the year "to pursue other career opportunities."The AFR report, however, said Clasquin's email indicated he planned to take a 12-month sabbatical in Perth. Calls to Clasquin's office were not returned yesterday.Clasquin's speech had been billed by IT analyst firm Gartner as one of the highlights of its Symposium. According to the spokeswoman his presentation was pulled even though "he was not going to be speaking about the company anyway but rather the CIO role, his career and CIO challenges."Clasquin was slated to outline: "His experience in replacing core systems, which can be expensive and time consuming and can only be successful with effective change management. In this session Tony will discuss the obvious, unravel the complex and share some secrets for success and survival."Although BankWest prevented Clasquin from speaking at yesterday's Gartner event it did not prevent the publication last week of an interview with Clasquin in online publication ZDNet which gave no indication that he was planning on leaving the bank anytime soon - in fact quite the opposite as Clasquin outlined his longer-term ambitions for the bank's IT, an unusual step for a CIO about to step down.A spokesman for BankWest yesterday claimed that Clasquin had in fact resigned in October. He added that BankWest managing director Jon Sutton had thanked Clasquin for his "considerable contribution over the past two years" and that an internal and external search for a replacement for Clasquin was under way.