Even veteran bankers touting for deals should be careful about the company they keep
Bank chief executives can survive an official censure, as Jes Staley proved in 2018 – when he kept his job despite being fined £642,000 for trying to unmask a whistleblower at Barclays. A second adverse finding tends to be terminal, however. This time Staley required complete vindication from regulators examining his, and the board’s, description of his relationship with Jeffery Epstein. His resignation signals that he did not get what he needed: he had to go.
What, precisely, do regulators judge that he got wrong this time? Impossible to say until the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority publish their report, which could be at least a month away; the only point of clarity currently is that there are “no findings that Mr Staley saw, or was aware of, any of Mr Epstein’s alleged crimes”, says Barclays.
