Staley rides to the rescue

Will he be the Barclays boss who breaks the mould?

WILL Barclays’ chief executive-in-waiting, Jes Staley, be the man to scotch the bank’s deep- seated problems once and for all? If the record of past bosses is anything to go by, don’t bank on it: he could be part of an established pattern where the bank is on a seemingly endless loop of repeating its mistakes.

Barclays has been unsure what to do with its investment bank for almost three decades, since it bought the business in an attempt to cash in on the Big Bang reforms that swept the City in 1986.

Despite the efforts of successive bosses, it still seems to have no clear strategy.

Perhaps that is no surprise. In the past 20 years, the lender has lurched from one personality type to another in its choice of chief executive, swinging from hard-charging Americans to understated Englishmen and back again.

In that period, the bank has gone through a not-so-magnificent seven chief executives. No fewer than three executive chairmen have had to take charge temporarily after a meltdown.

The Geiger- counter of boardroom dysfunction at Barclays has been one of the most alarming in Britain.

Here, we examine the sometimes toxic, frequently farcical, line of succession at one of the UK’s leading banks.

MARTIN TAYLOR

( The Brain Box) TENURE: 1993-1998 HOW DID HE DO? Lost the plot TAYLOR was the first non-family member ever to lead the bank after a long string of Tukes, Bevans, Buxtons and other descendants of the Quaker founders.

He was also the youngest-ever chief executive, aged just 41 when he took the post. A formidable intellect honed at Eton and Balliol proved no defence against vicious internal politics. Taylor oversaw the break-up of the investment banking arm, then known as BZW, in a chaotic process that resulted in losses of nearly £700m. He later said he regretted not sacking the then head of Barclays Capital, Bob Diamond, back in 1998.

A chastened Taylor now sits on the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee.

SIR PETER MIDDLETON

(The Mandarin) TENURE: 1998-1999 HOW DID HE DO? Steadied the ship MIDDLETON was the Treasury’s monetary guru until he switched career to finance in his fifties. He was thrust into the hot seat by Taylor’s unexpected resignation, hot- footing it to the office after receiving a phone call whilst looking at cars in a Pi cc a dilly showroom.

His year-long tenure is widely seen as blameless – though the succession at the bank was about to take a ludicrous turn.

MIKE O’NEILL

(The Surfer) TENURE: Blink and you missed it HOW DID HE DO? No time to find out CALIFORNIAN Mike O’Neill never even started the job as Barclays boss back in 1999, resigning because of an arrhythmic heartbeat.

He recovered sufficiently a year later to take a job as chairman and chief executive of Bank of Hawaii.

MATTHEW BARRETT

(The Charmer) TENURE: 1994-2004 HOW DID HE DO? Surprisingly well WITHIN days of his arrival, the mustachioed, cigarette smoking bon viveur was in the midst of a controversy over nude pictures of his former wife, Anne Marie Sten.

Frequently snapped stepping out of Annabel’s and other clubs in the early hours, the Irish-Canadian once described himself as a ‘recovering Randian’, claiming to mean he was a former disciple of novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand.

He told a Treasury committee he didn’t borrow on credit cards – like Barclaycard – as they were too expensive.

Despite his gaffe- strewn promenade through the British banking scene, he took profits from £2.4bn when he started to £3.8bn in 2003.

JOHN VARLEY

(The Gentleman) TENURE: 2004-2010 HOW DID HE DO? The jury’s still out VARLEY, an urbane English gent who married into one of the founding Barclays’ families, was known at the bank for his colourful braces, a passion for ping-pong, and his rapier brain. He was at the helm in the thick of the financial crisis, and has been interviewed along with other former bosses, by the Serious Fraud Office over the bank’s dealings with Qatari investors.

He and other individuals, who deny wrongdoing, have not been charged.

BOB DIAMOND

(The Chancer) TENURE: 2011 -2012 HOW DID HE DO? Need you ask… DIAMOND, who made a personal fortune in excess of £100m from his time at Barclays, still divides peo- ple. Devotees still regard him as a hero, whereas to his detractors he is, as Peter Mandelson once described him, the unacceptable f ace of banking.

Synonymous with casino banking, he was forced to quit in the wake of the Libor scandal, leaving chairman Marcus Agius to come back from his own resignation to hold the fort.

Diamond has, since leaving Barclays, tried to export his expertise to Africa in a venture called Atlas Mara.

ANTONY JENKINS

(The Saint) TENURE: 2012-2015 HOW DID HE DO? Drowned in sorrows ‘St Antony’ Jenkins, a British retail banker, had one big virtue: he looked and sounded like the anti-Diamond.

He tried to instil a sense of ethics throughout the organisation, for which he was widely mocked.

He also l acked the cocktail of skills to tackle the i nvestment bank – and a hangover swiftly followed.

Chairman John McFarlane, who delivered the coup de grace, has taken personal charge until a replacement – presumed to be Staley – takes over.