Troubled British bank Barclays PLC, plagued by the forex and London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) rigging scandals, announced yesterday that it had fired chief executive Antony Jenkins with immediate effect.
Barclays management has “concluded that new leadership is required” to accelerate an overhaul of the beleaguered group, it said in a statement on the decision.
Jenkins has now left the group with immediate effect, a spokesman told reporters.
Photo: AFP
Barclays chairman John McFarlane has been appointed executive chairman until a successor to Jenkins is found.
“I reflected long and hard on the issue of group leadership, and discussed this with each of the non-executive directors,” Barclays deputy chairman Michael Rake said. “Notwithstanding Antony’s significant achievements, it became clear to all of us that a new set of skills were required for the period ahead.”
Jenkins replaced Bob Diamond in July 2012 — who himself was forced to resign after the damaging LIBOR rate-fixing scandal.
The LIBOR is the rate that banks charge each other for short-term loans and underpins US$300 trillion of transactions worldwide.
The retail banking veteran had vowed to bring a new culture of decency to Barclays and oversaw drastic restructuring that shrank its investment bank.
Barclays was fined ￡290 million by British and US regulators in 2012 for attempted manipulation of LIBOR and the Euro interbank offered rate between 2005 and 2009.
However, Jenkins has struggled to restore the group’s damaged reputation, which was also tarnished by forex rigging.
“In the summer of 2012, I became group chief executive at a particularly difficult time for Barclays,” Jenkins said in the statement.
“It is easy to forget just how bad things were three years ago both for our industry and even more so for us,” he added.
“I am very proud of the significant progress we have made since then,” he said. “Our capital position is much stronger, our business model is more balanced, we are much more disciplined on cost management, we have made good progress in rebuilding our reputation and we are seen as a leader in the application of technology to our business.”
Under Jenkins, Barclays slashed more than 19,000 jobs, but the group has struggled to recover from the LIBOR fallout.
In another damaging blow, Barclays was slapped in May with a US$2.4 billion fine by US and UK regulators for foreign-exchange market manipulation.
Six global banks, including Barclays and British peer Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, were fined a total of almost US$6 billion, mostly for rigging the foreign exchange market.
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