Major investors at Barclays are to grill its chairman over a multi-billion-pound trading gaffe.
Nigel Higgins will be meeting top shareholders to be questioned about the debacle ahead of the bank’s annual meeting next month.
Barclays came under fire last month after revealing that it had sold more investment banking products in the United States than it was allowed to – overshooting its limit by £11.5billion.
Overshoot: Barclays came under fire last month after revealing that it had sold more investment banking products in the United States than it was allowed to
It estimated the error would cost up to £450million. Its shares have since dropped by more than 10 per cent to £1.45.
One shareholder asked: ‘Whose heads have rolled? If someone in the investment banking division who was responsible hasn’t been fired, then I’d want to know why. This is a cock-up of monumental proportions. It will take years to rebuild credibility.’
A top-ten shareholder in Barclays said: ‘Usually these are bland meetings, but this time we want to understand the implications of this issue and how seriously they’re taking it – and whether there’s a deeper problem.’
The error has come as a blow to new boss CS Venkatakrishnan, who was the bank’s chief risk officer in 2019 when the selling error occurred.
Shareholders are also calling for outgoing finance chief Tushar Morzaria to be stripped of his £1.5million bonus.
Former chief executive Jes Staley quit last year following a probe into his relationship with paedophile tycoon Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in jail in 2019.
