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July 9, 2012
Ex Barclays CEO: I Too Fell for the Diamond Myth
CNBC via Yahoo! Finance
by Deepanshu Bagchee
Seems not "knowing" what his rogue subordinates were doing is nothing new for "Diamond" Bob Diamond.
Former Barclays CEO Martin Taylor says he had asked Bob Diamond to stay on as head of Barclays Capital back in 1998 after the latter offered to resign following losses of hundreds of millions of pounds from Russia's debt default. According to Taylor those losses were the result of Diamond's unit failing to adhere to trading limits set by the firm.
In a column in the Financial Times, Taylor says Diamond asked the credit committee for higher trading limits. But when the division didn't get the limits it was looking for, it "falsely marked some Russian banking counterparties as Swiss or American" and "blasted through the ceiling."
"The traders were fired. Their leader maintained that he had known nothing about what was going on. He felt terrible. He loved Barclays. He offered to go," Taylor said about Diamond.
"I concluded that the embryonic business that BarCap then was would fall apart without him, and that he should stay."
Regrets? He's had a few.
"I suspect the subsequent history of the business would have been very different had I asked him to go. I deserve blame for being among the first to succumb to the myth of Diamond's indispensability, to which some in Barclays were still in thrall only a matter of days ago."
Related content...
The Daily Mail, Diamond Bob's spoilt brat and a super-rich elite with no shame
Nel Diamond, however, thinks everyone should just leave Daddy alone.
Diamond was criticised for presiding over a culture of reckless greed at Barclays. He agreed that the Libor interest rate fixing scandal was appalling. He said he was angry, physically sick — really? — when he read the damning emails. However, guess what? Not quite sick enough to hand in his £18 million payout, thanks all the same.
Diamond is doing his best to appear contrite, but he is just one more fake penitent in the public dock today. In private, it will be a very different story. Behind closed doors, I suspect, he will have feelings of entitlement and rage over his forced resignation which are awful to behold.
Indeed, for an insight into how Diamond really feels, look no further than his daughter Nell, the 23-year-old Wall Street banker who jumped to the defence of her darling daddy earlier this week.
Posted by eric at July 9, 2012 10:44 AM