“The head of Barclays today argued that the 'period of remorse and
apology for banks needs to be over' - just a day after it emerged he is likely
to receive a payout of £9million this year”
Daily Mail / 12 January 2011
“Bob Diamond to leave Barclays with £2m after waiving £20m bonus
Bob Diamond, who resigned as Barclays chief executive over manipulation
of Libor, has waived bonuses and long-term share awards worth up to £20m and
accepted a severance package of around £2m.”
“Mr Diamond was forced to resign after pressure from politicians and
regulators after Barclays admitted manipulating Libor between 2005 and 2009 and
was fined £290m by UK and US regulators investigating the scandal.”
The Telegraph / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/barc/9388852/Bob-Diamond-to-leave-Barclays-with-2m-after-waiving-20m-bonus.html
Barclays boss Bob Diamond resigns amid Libor scandal
3 July 2012
Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has resigned a week
after the bank was fined a record amount for trying to manipulate inter-bank
lending rates.
BBC business editor Robert Peston said he was encouraged to
go by the heads of the Bank of England and the FSA.
Mr Diamond said he was stepping down because the external
pressure on the bank risked "damaging the franchise".
Chief operating officer Jerry del Missier has also resigned,
the third top executive in two days to do so.
Barclays chairman Marcus Agius, who had announced his own
resignation on Monday, will now take over the running of Barclays until a new
chief executive is appointed.
'Cynical greed'
BBC business editor Robert Peston said the heads of the
City's two main regulators had been unable to force Mr Diamond out
"because the recent FSA investigation into how Barclays attempted to rig
the important Libor interest rates did not find him personally culpable".
"However, as a regulated institution, it was impossible
for Barclays' board to ignore the revealed wishes of the two most powerful
regulators in the City."
Earlier, Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services
Authority, described the outrage that has built up over the bank's actions.
"The cynical greed of traders asking their colleagues
to falsify their Libor submissions so that they could make bigger profits - has
justifiably shocked and angered people, in particular when we are facing hard
economic times provoked by the financial crisis," he told the Financial
Services Authority's annual meeting.
Committee appearance
Mr Diamond will still appear before MPs on the Treasury
Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the Libor affair.
"I look forward to fulfilling my obligation to
contribute to the Treasury Committee's enquiries related to the settlements
that Barclays announced last week without my leadership in question," Mr
Diamond said in a statement.
He is expected to be questioned about a conversation he had
with the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Paul Tucker, about Barclays'
Libor submissions at the height of the credit crunch in 2008.
Barclays' managers came to believe, after the conversation
between Mr Diamond and Mr Tucker, that the Bank of England had sanctioned them
to lie about what they were paying to borrow when providing data to the
committees that set the Libor rate.
Inquiry row
Chancellor George Osborne welcomed Mr Diamond's departure
and said he hoped it was the "first step towards a new culture of
responsibility" in banking.
"It is the right decision for the country," Mr
Osborne said, saying the UK needed a strong Barclays concentrating on lending
and contributing to economic recovery.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said it was "necessary and
right" that Bob Diamond stepped down.
"But this is about much more than one individual, it's
about the culture and practices of the banking industry," he said.
"That's why we need a full, judge-led, independent
inquiry, to get to the bottom of those practices and make recommendations for
change in the future. We've had missed opportunities before, we've got to seize
this moment."
Labour is critical of the government's decision to call a
parliamentary inquiry, chaired by the head of the Treasury Committee, Andrew
Tyrie MP, rather than a full Leveson-style inquiry, independent of politicians.
Big pay-off?
Last week, regulators in the US and UK fined Barclays £290m
($450m) for attempting to rig Libor and Euribor, the interest rates at which
banks lend to each other, which underpin trillions of pounds worth of financial
transactions.
Staff did this over a number of years, trying to raise them
for profit and then, during the financial crisis, lowering them to hide the
level to which Barclays was under financial stress.
Mr Diamond is one of the UK's highest paid chief executives,
earning £20m last year, and was described as "the unacceptable face"
of banking by the then business secretary Lord Mandelson in 2010.
The details of any severance package are not yet known, but
former City minister Lord Myners suggests it could add up to £20m-£30m.
"I think his resignation letter is drafted with an eye
to that [pay-off], because he admits no guilt on his part at all," the
Labour peer told BBC News.
"The shareholders of Barclays will be expecting the
board to ensure that not a penny more is paid to Bob Diamond than that to which
he is legally entitled," he said.
US-born Mr Diamond was head of Barclays Capital, its
investment bank division, when its staff were trying to manipulate the key
inter-bank rates.
"He maintains that he didn't know what was going
on," says Robert Peston.
Investigations are continuing in the UK and the US into
other banks over Libor fixing, including criminal investigations by the
Department of Justice. The Serious Fraud Office in the UK is looking into
possible criminal prosecutions.
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