Staveley was simply ‘promoting herself’
HIGH-FlYING financier Amanda staveley has been branded a publicity seeker as her High Court case against Barclays was dismissed as a ‘fantasy’.
The 47-year-old (pictured), who once dated Prince Andrew, is suing the British bank for £1.6bn on claims she was edged out of a lucrative deal at the height of the financial crisis.
Barclays turned to investors in Qatar and Abu Dhabi in 2008 to raise more than £7bn and maintain its independence from the UK government and state ownership.
staveley, who was representing Abu Dhabi, claimed Barclays offered her firm PCP the ‘same deal’ as other investors only to instead funnel an extra £346m in secret fees to Qatar.
But David Forbes, a former adviser to Abu Dhabi who worked for its sovmore ereign wealth fund IPIC, said staveley used the deal to promote herself, and that she was out of her depth as she did not understand financial language.
In a witness statement, Forbes said: ‘I recall Ms staveley caused irritation by repeatedly seeking media publicity for herself.’
In November she caused ‘further irritation’ by taking steps ‘designed to make her role appear prominent than it actually was’, according to court filings.
Forbes added: ‘I understand the claimant’s case to be that PCP was in control (so to speak) of the Barclays investment. This is, in my view, fantasy.’
He went on: ‘The more time that we spent with Ms staveley the more we began to build up a picture of her as someone who would confidently make assertions which proved to lack any real foundation or which she would later contradict without realising. My colleagues and I were also getting fed up with Ms staveley making promises and not delivering.’
The case has revealed the deeply personal feuds between the City’s best-known names, and the enormous salaries they commanded for their work.
This week Barclays top deal maker Roger Jenkins, who earned £167m over four years making him Britain’s best-paid banker, apologised for calling staveley a ‘dolly bird’ and a ‘tart’.
Another banker, stephen Jones, resigned as boss of lobby group UK Finance last month over ‘deeply unpleasant and personal’ comments made about staveley in 2008.
Yesterday, Forbes told the court that his initial impression had been that staveley was ‘very likeable, charming and friendly’. But he said it became apparent she had a ‘very limited knowledge of financial instruments and transactions, or how to analyse them’.
staveley, who in recent months has been involved in a deal which could see a saudi consortium take control of Newcastle United FC, was also accused of making a dishonest attempt to extract £11m payment from IPIC for costs she had not incurred.
When the deal was signed, PCP was paid £30m, which Forbes considered ‘extraordinarily generous given her actual contribution’. PCP claims that if it were not for the alleged deceit it could have collected between £400m and £1.6bn. The case continues.