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Barclays seems to have a finger in every one of those pies. Tonight, | :00:04. | :00:07. | |
Panorama reveals how shareholders were misled about one of the | :00:07. | :00:12. | |
biggest investments in the bank's history. Any discrepancy of that | :00:12. | :00:16. | |
kind is serious because it raises questions in the minds of investors. | :00:16. | :00:19. | |
Barclays told the world that a Middle Eastern Sheikh was investing | :00:19. | :00:24. | |
more than �3 billion, but we discovered he never did. It's | :00:24. | :00:27. | |
important because if you're not getting it right, you may be | :00:27. | :00:32. | |
committing a crime. Tomorrow, the bank will announce | :00:32. | :00:42. | |
:00:42. | :00:57. | ||
how it intends to change. Tonight, Barclays, Britain's second biggest | :00:57. | :01:04. | |
bank. 1,600 branches and 15 million customers. It's the sponsor of the | :01:04. | :01:10. | |
Premier League and these, London's Boris bikes. Barclays isn't just | :01:10. | :01:13. | |
the bank you know from the high street, that's all changed. | :01:13. | :01:20. | |
Barclays is now a much bigger deal. It's grown from a national retail | :01:20. | :01:27. | |
bank to an international financial powerhouse. Barclays has gone from | :01:27. | :01:30. | |
being a high street bank with an investment bank attached to it, to | :01:30. | :01:34. | |
effectively an investment bank with a high street bank attached to it. | :01:34. | :01:38. | |
It was the high street operation, the money in millions of personal | :01:38. | :01:43. | |
accounts, that helped the investment bank to grow. Having a | :01:43. | :01:48. | |
retail bank attached to you is a great way to make an investment | :01:48. | :01:53. | |
bank bigger and protect the investment bank from the risks that | :01:53. | :01:57. | |
come with running an investment bank. The plan worked. The high | :01:57. | :02:01. | |
street bank used by the likes of you and me is now the junior | :02:01. | :02:06. | |
partner. The riskier investment bank made three times as much | :02:06. | :02:16. | |
:02:16. | :02:23. | ||
profit as its UK retail and But in recent years, the Barclays | :02:23. | :02:27. | |
dream has gone sour. It was the first bank to admit cheating | :02:27. | :02:32. | |
interest rates to boost profits. The so-called LIBOR scandal forced | :02:32. | :02:36. | |
out Bob Diamond, the high-profile chief executive. Clearly, there | :02:36. | :02:42. | |
were mistakes, clearly there was behaviour that was reprehensible. | :02:42. | :02:45. | |
His replacement, Antony Jenkins, has not had a great couple of weeks. | :02:45. | :02:51. | |
He is promising a fresh start at Barclays. I believe we have been | :02:51. | :02:55. | |
too short-term focused, on occasions too aggressive and on | :02:55. | :02:58. | |
occasions too self-serving. But two of his senior management team | :02:58. | :03:02. | |
announced they were leaving. And after criticism of a potential | :03:02. | :03:08. | |
million pound bonus, Mr Jenkins gave it up. Barclays have told us | :03:08. | :03:10. | |
their commitment to change is genuine. | :03:10. | :03:20. | |
:03:20. | :03:21. | ||
And this corporate video shows senior ecs chewing the fat on | :03:21. | :03:25. | |
Barclays new values. Can I justify to colleagues, friends, family, | :03:25. | :03:30. | |
what have I done today? Am I improving their lives and can I be | :03:30. | :03:34. | |
proud? It makes you feel good, as well. But there are much more | :03:34. | :03:38. | |
serious threats on the horizon. Four investigations into how the | :03:38. | :03:43. | |
investment bank did business. Five, if you include an internal Barclays | :03:43. | :03:52. | |
review. So chase gone on inside Barclays? | :03:52. | :03:56. | |
We have been through thousands of pages of documents and spoken to | :03:56. | :04:00. | |
insiders to try and build a picture of the way the bank worked. It's a | :04:00. | :04:04. | |
place where incredibly complex deals helped the Barclays bonuses | :04:04. | :04:08. | |
keep coming. One man had more influence on the | :04:08. | :04:13. | |
shape of Barclays today than any other - the former chief executive, | :04:13. | :04:19. | |
Bob Diamond. He grew the investment bank into a | :04:19. | :04:27. | |
money-making machine and then took over the whole Barclays operation. | :04:27. | :04:31. | |
He was charismatic, charming, and influential. | :04:31. | :04:39. | |
He is, or was, extremely successful and aggressive and die mamic -- | :04:39. | :04:43. | |
dynamic investment banker. In the City he was admired for what he | :04:43. | :04:47. | |
built. Whenever we questioned him as analysts he was never strong on | :04:47. | :04:50. | |
the detail of the numbers but he had a clear plan and knew how he | :04:50. | :04:54. | |
wanted to deliver that. I get newspaper the morning, I want | :04:55. | :04:58. | |
a big breakfast, I want my girlfriend to say good morning, big | :04:58. | :05:03. | |
boy... Barclays wanted to know know, as this advert shows from 2000, the | :05:03. | :05:09. | |
bank was brash, proud, and up for the biggest deals. Big head... I | :05:09. | :05:13. | |
get into my big car, she will give me a big wave, close the door of | :05:13. | :05:21. | |
our big house... It was prepared to pay big rewards. Only one problem, | :05:21. | :05:29. | |
my fee, I'd like it to be - what's the word? | :05:29. | :05:34. | |
Bob Diamond instilled Wall Street values into Barclays. It was every | :05:34. | :05:39. | |
man for himself. You imagine banks to be like that. The best banks are | :05:39. | :05:45. | |
not like that. Those there in the early days as the investment bank | :05:45. | :05:51. | |
grew, say it was all about doing bigger deals. You want to work at a | :05:51. | :05:56. | |
profitable investment bank, if you don't there there be problems at | :05:56. | :06:03. | |
bonus time. The bonus is King? Barclays, if you brought home the | :06:03. | :06:09. | |
bacon, you could do speug - anything. How did they bring home | :06:09. | :06:13. | |
the cash? Barclays shifted the focus from high street banking to | :06:13. | :06:16. | |
trading on the international financial markets, some of which | :06:16. | :06:22. | |
has been criticised as casino- banking. The power inside that bank | :06:22. | :06:28. | |
passed away from the old-fashioned bankers to the casino operators | :06:28. | :06:32. | |
like Bob and his gang. Genuinely, there were quite a few profits, but | :06:32. | :06:36. | |
some of the profits of the superprofits were coming by taking | :06:36. | :06:41. | |
an extreme risk. Barclays say many banks were involved in the | :06:41. | :06:45. | |
aggressive pursuit of profit. They reject the term casino-banking | :06:45. | :06:49. | |
and point out that the investment bank has raised around a trillion | :06:49. | :06:54. | |
pounds for UK businesses. Sometimes the most amazing things can escape | :06:54. | :06:59. | |
your attention... Barclays, as this slightly disturbing American | :06:59. | :07:05. | |
recruitment video shows, went hunting for the best people. For | :07:05. | :07:12. | |
Bob Diamond they didn't come cheap. He got out his cheque book and he | :07:12. | :07:16. | |
pioneered the idea of guaranteed bonuses, so it didn't matter how | :07:17. | :07:21. | |
badly you did, you'd just get your guaranteed bonus. And that became, | :07:21. | :07:24. | |
you know, - some people said that was almost like a cancer that | :07:24. | :07:28. | |
spread across the City. A company that is using their talents to | :07:28. | :07:33. | |
become one of the fastest-growing investment banks... Investment | :07:33. | :07:36. | |
banking is the same as the Premier League. The more you pay, the | :07:36. | :07:39. | |
higher you finish up the League table in the Premier League, the | :07:40. | :07:47. | |
same with investment banking. Of course, private companies can | :07:47. | :07:52. | |
pay what they like. And other investment banks pay their staff | :07:52. | :07:57. | |
well, too. But Barclays has been criticised for continuing to pay | :07:57. | :08:02. | |
high bonuses even after the financial crisis in 2008. In 2011, | :08:02. | :08:07. | |
Barclays paid nearly �2.6 billion in bonuses, but what about the | :08:07. | :08:13. | |
people who actually own the bank - the shareholders? What does it feel | :08:13. | :08:18. | |
like to be a shareholder of Barclays today? Pretty grim. Robert | :08:18. | :08:22. | |
Muriel has been a shareholder for 30 years, but in recent years his | :08:22. | :08:27. | |
dividend has been slashed. He has written to the bank over the years | :08:27. | :08:33. | |
dozens of times. What did you tell the bank, what was your view? | :08:33. | :08:36. | |
view was that these payments were excessive. I realise the people | :08:36. | :08:40. | |
were making money for the bank at the time, but I couldn't see any | :08:40. | :08:44. | |
need for any one individual to get that sort of reward. | :08:44. | :08:48. | |
In fairness to Barclays, their record on dividend payments is | :08:48. | :08:53. | |
better than some of their rivals. They say they are committed to | :08:53. | :08:57. | |
rebalancing rewards between shareholders and staff. The | :08:57. | :09:00. | |
overwhelming majority of shareholders support the pay | :09:00. | :09:04. | |
structure, and those with shares in banks the Government did bail out | :09:04. | :09:13. | |
still do not receive any dividends at all. | :09:13. | :09:17. | |
This recent ad suggests Barclays has moved with the times. This is | :09:17. | :09:24. | |
the shape of my banking. Bonuses at Barclays have reduced | :09:24. | :09:28. | |
significantly since 2008. But bonuses have far outweighed what | :09:28. | :09:37. | |
the bank has paid to its owners - the shareholders. I think that | :09:37. | :09:42. | |
investment banking is - says it's for the shareholder, but actually | :09:42. | :09:48. | |
is a machine for the enrichment of investment bankers. Karel Williams | :09:48. | :09:52. | |
is an academic who we asked to study Barclays' accounts. He says | :09:52. | :09:58. | |
the investment bank dominates the business. The firm has partly been | :09:59. | :10:04. | |
captured by its investment banker workforce. The commitment of | :10:04. | :10:08. | |
resources to Barclays investment bank is much more in the interest | :10:08. | :10:13. | |
of the senior investment bankers than it is in the interests of the | :10:13. | :10:20. | |
shareholders or the public. You can see why people might | :10:20. | :10:24. | |
suggest that Barclays was being run for the benefit of its employees. | :10:24. | :10:30. | |
Over the course of 2010 and 2011, Barclays paid its shareholders, the | :10:30. | :10:36. | |
people who own the company, �1.4 billion. Over the same period, | :10:36. | :10:44. | |
Barclays paid its staff �6 billion in bonuses. There's absolutely no | :10:44. | :10:48. | |
doubt that they were at the expense of shareholders. Martin Taylor was | :10:48. | :10:53. | |
chief executive of Barclays until 1998. At the time, he questioned | :10:53. | :10:56. | |
Barclays' expansion of its investment bank. The value in the | :10:56. | :11:02. | |
investment bank seemed to be going, even in the 1990s, to the people | :11:02. | :11:06. | |
who worked in it. And the shareholders were underwriting the | :11:06. | :11:11. | |
risk. That was what worried me. I don't think anybody in the | :11:11. | :11:13. | |
investment banking industry deserves the amount of money | :11:13. | :11:17. | |
they're being paid. I think the amount of money paid is utterly | :11:17. | :11:22. | |
unjustified and has been for quite a long time. | :11:22. | :11:26. | |
Barclays says it pays less than many investment banks and that | :11:26. | :11:32. | |
dramatically cutting pay would cult in key staff leaving the business. | :11:32. | :11:36. | |
What about Bob? What was he on? You might think a bank more than most | :11:36. | :11:40. | |
employers would know how much they were handing over. So we asked | :11:40. | :11:44. | |
Barclays to give us a figure for Bob Diamond's pay for the years he | :11:44. | :11:50. | |
was a director. We asked lots of times. We asked for months. We got | :11:50. | :11:55. | |
nowhere. Barclays told us that we were unable or unwilling to | :11:56. | :11:59. | |
complete the simple task of compiling this information from the | :11:59. | :12:03. | |
relevant public documents. They told us to look in 36 different | :12:03. | :12:08. | |
places in the annual reports and said, the the answer is in there. | :12:08. | :12:14. | |
We did look and so did our experts. It would take you hours and hours, | :12:14. | :12:19. | |
if not weeks, to actually get to the bottom of this. You would need | :12:19. | :12:23. | |
a team of people working on this for days. If you look you can see | :12:23. | :12:26. | |
it's all over the place, you have to look there, and there. Four or | :12:26. | :12:32. | |
five pages. Our best estimate is that in six years Bob Bob took home | :12:32. | :12:37. | |
about �120 million in cash and shares. Barclays says a single | :12:37. | :12:42. | |
figure for Bob's pay is a potentially very misleading and | :12:42. | :12:52. | |
:12:52. | :12:54. | ||
oversimplified approach. So where's the money coming from to | :12:54. | :13:00. | |
fund the seven-figure bonuses? Panorama has gone inside a | :13:00. | :13:02. | |
controversial department that flourished in Bob Diamond's | :13:02. | :13:07. | |
investment bank. Barclays doesn't like talking about it, but it's | :13:07. | :13:14. | |
called Structured Capital Markets or SCM. What it did was amazing, it | :13:14. | :13:18. | |
only employed 100 people but managed to make around �1 billion | :13:18. | :13:25. | |
in profit a year. Now 140,000 people work for Barclays. But this | :13:25. | :13:28. | |
tiny team was generating a significant chunk of the bank's | :13:28. | :13:37. | |
total profits. How on oert did -- earth did they do it? Structured | :13:37. | :13:40. | |
capital markets, was that there when you were at the bank? Yes, it | :13:40. | :13:50. | |
:13:50. | :13:52. | ||
was. There was a business on a modest scale, very profitable. | :13:52. | :13:58. | |
was it for? It was for tax planning. Tax structuring. For international | :13:58. | :14:02. | |
business, mostly. Is that tax avoidance? Um, it's tax avoidance, | :14:02. | :14:10. | |
yes. Tax avoidance isn't illegal. And all banks work to lower taxes | :14:10. | :14:14. | |
for their clients. But tax avoidance at Barclays was done on a | :14:14. | :14:24. | |
:14:24. | :14:32. | ||
It was a major profit sector fall of Barclays. It was like their | :14:32. | :14:35. | |
office in Canary Wharf was an offshore island completely divorced | :14:35. | :14:41. | |
from the rest of Britain. I had a good look at what SCM was doing in | :14:41. | :14:44. | |
my day. The question was how aggressively it should be growing | :14:44. | :14:49. | |
and in my view it was not growing aggressively. You could only grow | :14:50. | :14:54. | |
it aggressively by pushing the envelope too far. Critics would say | :14:54. | :14:58. | |
that Martin Taylor always opposed a major expansion of investment bank. | :14:58. | :15:03. | |
It was the main reason that he left. After he went, the SCM department | :15:03. | :15:13. | |
:15:13. | :15:14. | ||
We have been given confidential documents that show the shape of | :15:14. | :15:21. | |
one SCM tax avoidance scheme. sits there. That is the finance. | :15:21. | :15:26. | |
Staff lent billions of pounds to a bank in Luxembourg with complex | :15:26. | :15:28. | |
structures and a company in the Cayman Islands. At the bottom we | :15:29. | :15:33. | |
have still got 2.5 billion. Barclays drew up the whole | :15:33. | :15:39. | |
structure. It is like a nightmare Ikea map. All of this helped | :15:39. | :15:44. | |
Barclays exploit the system and afford millions in tax. There is | :15:44. | :15:53. | |
something else here, 120 million dividend. Barclays at the top. | :15:53. | :15:58. | |
Barclays told us it does not offer, can don't or support unlawful tax | :15:58. | :16:05. | |
evasion. Where any SCM transaction has UK tax implications, we make | :16:05. | :16:13. | |
full and explicit disclosure to HMRC. Inside Barclays's investment | :16:13. | :16:18. | |
bank, SCM was a closed world. We have tracked down an insider. As | :16:18. | :16:23. | |
long as we protected his identity, he agreed to tell us about this | :16:23. | :16:28. | |
little known tax avoidance department. It was isolated. The | :16:28. | :16:32. | |
whole section had about 100 people including support staff so there | :16:32. | :16:36. | |
were about 60 people on the front end. They made huge profits. But of | :16:36. | :16:41. | |
their work was about finding new ways of avoiding tax. -- much of | :16:41. | :16:45. | |
their work. Some smart people in the product development team would | :16:45. | :16:50. | |
come up with a tax trick and the marketing team would cloak it in a | :16:50. | :16:53. | |
rationale. There is nothing wrong with it, it is perfectly normal, | :16:53. | :16:57. | |
but the issue is that they turned it into an industry within the bank. | :16:57. | :17:03. | |
We set to ourselves at the time, how does a bank get away with this? | :17:03. | :17:08. | |
SCM paid some of Barclays's biggest bonuses. The bonus pool was 10% of | :17:08. | :17:12. | |
profits, we have been told, which would mean in its best year 100 | :17:12. | :17:18. | |
people shed �100 million. Barclays says that the figure is not | :17:18. | :17:25. | |
accurate. At the weekend SCM closed and the bank is expected to say | :17:25. | :17:32. | |
that they will no longer engaged in activities where the main objective | :17:32. | :17:38. | |
is to avoid tax. That brings us to the biggest deal of all. In 2008, | :17:38. | :17:46. | |
Barclays is in trouble. It looked like they have to ask for a | :17:46. | :17:50. | |
Government bail out. In 2008, British banking was in crisis. But | :17:51. | :17:55. | |
perfectly reasonably they were desperate to avoid a bail out. | :17:55. | :17:59. | |
was Barclays keen to stay out of Government control when other banks | :17:59. | :18:03. | |
were bailed out? Barclays has made much of the fact that it remained | :18:03. | :18:07. | |
independent. But some say there is another reason, the same old reason, | :18:07. | :18:13. | |
bonuses. They were prepared to do anything to avoid going to the | :18:13. | :18:18. | |
taxpayer because that would have required limits on bonuses. It | :18:18. | :18:24. | |
would have undermined the culture that Bob Diamond was known for. | :18:24. | :18:28. | |
you think bonuses were a factor in this? I am sure it was. I don't | :18:28. | :18:38. | |
:18:38. | :18:40. | ||
believe it was the only reason but Barclays deny bonuses were a factor. | :18:40. | :18:45. | |
They had been told, like all banks, to increase the amount of their | :18:45. | :18:49. | |
reserves. By October, 2008, they found themselves with just a couple | :18:49. | :18:53. | |
of weeks to find the cash. We have been told they went to some | :18:54. | :19:03. | |
surprising places to try and get it. Like Libya. This was when Colonel | :19:03. | :19:08. | |
Gaddafi was still in charge. We have been told that Barclays asked | :19:08. | :19:12. | |
the Libyan investment authority if it wanted to buy a slice of the | :19:12. | :19:22. | |
:19:22. | :19:22. | ||
bank. One of the men who ran the Libyan fund told Panorama that they | :19:22. | :19:25. | |
turned Barclays down because the deal was too rushed and risky. | :19:25. | :19:29. | |
Barclays so that is not accurate and they had no need for funding | :19:29. | :19:38. | |
from Libya. -- Barclays said. In the end it did not matter. Two of | :19:38. | :19:42. | |
the groups in the Middle East were happy to provide the cash. �7 | :19:42. | :19:47. | |
billion, mainly from the Gulf states of Qatar and Abu Dhabi. It | :19:47. | :19:54. | |
came at almost credit card rates of up to 14%. The Qatar deal is under | :19:54. | :19:58. | |
investigation by the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Services | :19:58. | :20:03. | |
Authority. But we think the Abu Dhabi side of the deal raises | :20:03. | :20:08. | |
questions, too, about Barclays's relationship with a Middle Eastern | :20:08. | :20:18. | |
:20:18. | :20:20. | ||
You might not have heard of the man named as the main Abu Dhabi | :20:20. | :20:24. | |
investor. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. But you will have heard | :20:25. | :20:32. | |
of his other big British Investment, Manchester City. Sheikh Mansour | :20:32. | :20:35. | |
fronted the take-over of Manchester City a few months before he turned | :20:35. | :20:40. | |
his attention to Barclays. Here he is, meeting the players. He has | :20:40. | :20:45. | |
kept a low profile in the UK. I want you to tell me what you know | :20:45. | :20:52. | |
about Sheikh Mansour. He owns City. He is a good supporter of City. | :20:52. | :20:57. | |
That is all we know, really. He is a very wealthy person and he is | :20:57. | :21:00. | |
doing a fabulous job here. I don't know much about his investment in | :21:00. | :21:05. | |
this country, other than the stuff we did with Barclays bank, was it? | :21:05. | :21:09. | |
He bailed them out rather than have them going to the Government. I | :21:09. | :21:14. | |
know he made more cash from that. Sheikh Mansour is a member of the | :21:14. | :21:19. | |
ruling family in Abu Dhabi. Back in 2008, Barclays told the world that | :21:19. | :21:24. | |
the Sheikh was giving it more than �3 billion. Shareholders were told | :21:24. | :21:28. | |
the same thing and voted to accept the deal. Panorama has noticed | :21:28. | :21:33. | |
something odd. It was buried deep in paperwork that was issued the | :21:33. | :21:39. | |
day after the shareholders gave their approval. On page 44 of this | :21:39. | :21:43. | |
prospectus, it says that Sheikh Mansour has arranged for his | :21:43. | :21:49. | |
investment to be funded by an Abu Dhabi Government investment vehicle. | :21:49. | :21:54. | |
That seems like the Abu Dhabi Government was providing the cash, | :21:54. | :21:58. | |
and not Sheikh Mansour. And that is important because although Sheikh | :21:58. | :22:02. | |
Mansour is a member of the ruling family, there is a difference | :22:02. | :22:06. | |
between his money and the Government's. Are they the same? | :22:06. | :22:11. | |
They are not. It is sloppy thinking, this. There is a big difference | :22:11. | :22:18. | |
between a member of ruling family in the Emirates, who has his own | :22:18. | :22:25. | |
personal life, wealth and activities. When we started delving | :22:25. | :22:28. | |
deeper, we found more contradictions in the Barclays | :22:28. | :22:35. | |
paperwork. Barclays's filings to the US Government suggest that the | :22:36. | :22:39. | |
Abu Dhabi Government is the investor, not Sheikh Mansour. But | :22:39. | :22:43. | |
the Barclays annual report, that is sent to shareholders, talks about | :22:43. | :22:47. | |
Sheikh Mansour in two separate years, and the problem for Barclays | :22:47. | :22:56. | |
is that they cannot both be right. Two reports referring to the same | :22:56. | :22:59. | |
date, you would expect them to be entirely consistent. If they are | :22:59. | :23:04. | |
not, that means something is wrong. Something is not accurate. Every | :23:04. | :23:08. | |
bank is aware that the annual report is a critical document and a | :23:08. | :23:12. | |
huge amount of time and attention is put into getting the details | :23:12. | :23:18. | |
correct. Barclays has now told us the investor was actually the Abu | :23:18. | :23:22. | |
Dhabi Government. They have admitted that they knew the | :23:22. | :23:26. | |
investor might change, even as shareholders voted for Sheikh | :23:26. | :23:33. | |
Mansour. The banks say that when the change was confirmed, it | :23:33. | :23:40. | |
provided the appropriate disclosure. Barclays admits it was wrong to | :23:40. | :23:43. | |
identify Sheikh Mansour in the annual report but they say this was | :23:43. | :23:52. | |
simply a drafting error. So Barclays misled the public and its | :23:52. | :23:55. | |
shareholders over one of the biggest investments in its history. | :23:55. | :24:02. | |
But that is not the only reason why our discovery might be important. | :24:02. | :24:06. | |
Although Sheikh Mansour's money did not save Barclays, it did play a | :24:06. | :24:10. | |
crucial role in the deal. He was chairman of the Abu Dhabi | :24:10. | :24:14. | |
investment vehicle that provided the funding, a Government official. | :24:14. | :24:18. | |
If it turned out that Sheikh Mansour profited personally from | :24:18. | :24:25. | |
the deal, it might look like a bribe. You have to worry not | :24:25. | :24:29. | |
because Sheikh Mansour may or may not be doing something wrong. You | :24:29. | :24:34. | |
have to worry because you may be doing something wrong as a bank. | :24:34. | :24:39. | |
How big an issue is it to get that right? It is important because if | :24:39. | :24:46. | |
you are not getting it right, you may be committing a crime. | :24:46. | :24:51. | |
Barclays deal offered a lucrative incentive, the chance to buy 758 | :24:51. | :24:57. | |
million shares at a fixed price. We don't know who benefited from these | :24:57. | :25:01. | |
share options, technically called warrants, because Barclays issued | :25:02. | :25:08. | |
them to an offshore company. We do know a few facts. That offshore | :25:08. | :25:13. | |
company was controlled by Sheikh Mansour. It then transferred to the | :25:13. | :25:17. | |
Abu Dhabi Government, then an Abu Dhabi official, before eventually | :25:17. | :25:22. | |
ending up back with Sheikh Mansour. Because it is all offshore it is | :25:22. | :25:27. | |
impossible to prove whether the Sheikh benefited personally. Our | :25:27. | :25:30. | |
evidence suggests that there are serious grounds to investigate | :25:30. | :25:35. | |
whether he did. I think that red flags have popped up all over the | :25:35. | :25:43. | |
place. Every Fred fly past to be dealt with. -- every red flag has | :25:43. | :25:47. | |
to be dealt with. Whose responsibility is it to get to the | :25:47. | :25:52. | |
bottom of those issues? It is Barclays's. We asked Sheikh Mansour | :25:52. | :25:55. | |
and the Abu Dhabi investment vehicle about the deal but neither | :25:55. | :25:59. | |
of them would speak to us. Barclays told us the allegations were not | :25:59. | :26:04. | |
justified and that the change in ownership had no bearing on the | :26:04. | :26:09. | |
transaction or required approvals. What we know for certain is that | :26:09. | :26:13. | |
the Sheikh ended up as one of Barclays's biggest shareholders. | :26:13. | :26:17. | |
The bank told us the deal was the correct decision for Barclays, its | :26:17. | :26:21. | |
shareholders, its customers and its clients, as well as for the UK. | :26:21. | :26:25. | |
They never turned to the British taxpayer. Senior executives did | :26:25. | :26:30. | |
waive their bonuses the following year because of the deal, but the | :26:30. | :26:40. | |
:26:40. | :26:41. | ||
bonus culture inside the bank Barclays says it is not fair to put | :26:41. | :26:45. | |
this programme out the night before the new chief executive outlines | :26:45. | :26:51. | |
his vision for the future. In a statement, Mr Jenkins told us: | :26:51. | :26:55. | |
Unfortunately I cannot change the past. No one should underestimate | :26:55. | :27:00. | |
our total resolve to make Barclays a better bank. One of his | :27:00. | :27:07. | |
predecessors says things have to change. I think that trying to put | :27:07. | :27:12. | |
the business on a more solid for towing so that it does not make | :27:12. | :27:20. | |
these mis-steps in the future is very important. -- solid footing. | :27:20. | :27:26. | |
But some critics think it is too little too late. Barclays went from | :27:26. | :27:31. | |
being the most reputable bank long ago. You lose a reputation that | :27:31. | :27:34. | |
takes hundreds of years to build in a few years and it will take them a | :27:34. | :27:42. | |
long time to rebuild it. After so many years of relying on its | :27:42. | :27:45. | |
troublesome investment bank, can Barclays finally end its addiction | :27:45. | :27:55. | |
:27:55. | :27:59. |