Barclays Defence

The papers were full the other day of rumours that Bob Diamond was going to unleash a righteous fury on politicians and the Bank of England.

Yet he turned out to be an insignificant pipsqueak in his own production. His repeated attempts to avoid questions by saying that he agreed a handful of traders had done reprehensible and wrong things (how many times did he feel he had to say these things?), just annoyed the Committee who told him to answer properly; they were not interested in hearing his bleatings again.

Pursued until he answered, we found that Mr. Diamond had only found out about the rate rigging this month. Yet there was a massive investigation going on, costing £100 million apparently, of which he was 'aware' (surely something that big would catch his attention? Or is £100 million really such a small matter?) and then there was the legal action against Barclays.

It was drawn from him that a matter of the bank being the subject of legal action would have been brought to the boards attention. and that the bank was in fact subject of such an action, in April, for £36 million over damage caused by rate rigging. Yet this had no impact on the wonderful Mr. Diamond?


It was also mentioned that once a trader had stood up and shouted that he was going to under quote rates and asked if anyone had a problem with that. I'm pretty sure that if there wasn't a general acceptance that this was going on, if it was not part of the culture of this bank and indeed banking in general, then I would hazard that this man would not have been so public.

The implications of this event however, seemed to entirely evade Mr. Diamond; he continued to deplore the actions of fourteen among many thousands. He was unaware of the rate rigging. He abhorred it. Similarly, he didn't seem to see any responsibility by implying that these people were acting in this horrific way, merely for their own benefit, their own greed, as if the bank, his bank, the one he ran hadn't set up the way the bonuses worked.

At every turn Diamond came across as a pretty close rendition of an idiot. In fact I feel I would make a good replacement for him; I too know nothing of the workings of Barclay's Capital but I am not a corrupt or greedy person. That puts me streets ahead I think.

Although I do have some insight into the City, anecdotal but revealing nonetheless I feel. In the Nineties I worked for a company that was a preferred recruitment supplier to Barclays Capital. They made us jump through a few hoops to get the status, as of course, they were a prestige client. So we signed a contract and they gave us regular lists of their 100+ IT vacancies.

Then the list stopped coming. We chased and chased, phoning and leaving messages but with no success. Eventually, one of the HR people took the call and said we had been removed as a preferred supplier due to non performance (we hadn't been doing well, quite honestly). I asked why no-one had called us about the issue, called us in for a meeting? She said, they didn't want to tell us because they thought we might argue! This was the powerful HR department of the prestige client Barclays Capital! And they did this even though the contract included a month's notice, which of course hadn't been honoured.

That was the quality of Barclays Capital. On another occasion I attended a 'recruitment day' at a bank (possibly Deutsche) where a succession of IT Managers talked about their departments and their needs, to a room full of recruiters (and their HR). I remember one, the Network Manager quite well. He was a right geezer. In a broad Lahndun accent he described his group. He wanted people who were motivated and talented and he kept talking about blokes, until he corrected himself saying, 'it could be a girl, if they are OK abaht a bit of banter and muck in an' 'at'.

Methinks their houses were built on sand.