The patrician who married into banking royalty
OXFORD-EDUCATED John Varley appeared the quintessential old-school banker.
With his high-waisted trousers, red braces and worthy – even dull – demeanour he was the patrician antithesis of the ‘wide boy’ school of modern finance.
Mr Varley had worked as a solicitor, like his father, before joining Barclays in 1982.
Insiders say the 61-year- old’s dearest wish had always been to run the bank. Indeed, he even married into its fabric.
Carolyn, his wife of thirty-plus years, was the daughter of Sir Richard Thorn Pease, scion of a Quaker banking family whose business was absorbed into Barclays in 1902.
The marriage brought other financial connections. His sisterin-law was the hedge fund manager Nichola Pease, who is married to hedge fund billionaire Crispin Odey.
At Barclays, father- of-two Mr Varley rose steadily through the executive ranks in asset management and retail financial services. In 2000 he closed 171 branches and fired 6,000 staff in one day and had a torrid time explaining himself on BBC radio’s Today.
After being passed over for the top job on at least one occasion, the fishing and ping-pong fanatic beat off the challenge of his brash long-time rival at Barclays, American banker Bob Diamond, to become the £ 1million- a- year group chief executive in 2004.
On his retirement seven years later, he handed the role over to Mr Diamond.
Mr Varley was head of Barclays throughout the 2008 financial crisis and was the first finance boss to apologise to the public, saying of the aftermath: ‘It starts by saying sorry. It starts by admitting things went wrong.’
Under his leadership, the bank snapped up the remnants of Lehman Brothers – the Wall Street bank which filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, precipitating the banking crisis – for a bargain $1.75billion.
He also ensured that Barclays, unlike other British banks during that crisis, did not need a Government bailout. The reason for this was that Barclays secured Middle Eastern money instead.
Yesterday Mr Varley was charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and the provision of unlawful financial assistance in relation to that deal with the Qataris.
Another unexpected twist has taken place in the devout Catholic’s apparently conventional life. It emerged earlier this month that the former pupil of Catholic boarding school Downside and his wife Carolyn had divorced.
He is due to marry again, in October, to art consultant Bettina von Hase – the daughter of a former German ambassador to the UK – whom he had known at Oxford in the 1970s.
Mr Varley has resigned as a director of mining giant Rio Tinto, from the board of BlackRock, as chairman of Marie Curie Cancer Care, and as a trustee of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation.