Barclays boss Jes Staley to pay £1.1m for attempting to unmask whistleblower
Barclays chief Jes Staley has been fined £642,000 by City regulators for attempting to unmask a whistleblower two years ago.
The former Morgan Stanley banker was also docked £500,000 in bonuses by Barclays, taking the total hit to this pay to just over £1.1m.
Mr Staley was first informed he was being fined last month, but was spared the stricter sanction of being barred from running a lender to the dismay of whistleblowing lawyers.
In a joint statement, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) confirmed the size of the fine.
They also announced Barclays would be subject to stricter oversight of its whistleblowing systems and controls after identifying a number of "concerns" in these areas.
These tighter controls will remain in place until the end of 2020.
Mark Steward at the FCA said: "Mr Staley breached the standard of care required and expected of a chief executive in a way that risked undermining confidence in Barclays’ whistleblowing procedures."
Following the regulators' announcement, Barclays confirmed that it would be clawing back £500,000 from Mr Staley's £1.32m bonus for 2016.
Mr Staley said: "I have consistently acknowledged that my personal involvement in this matter was inappropriate, and I have apologised for mistakes which I made.
"I accept the conclusions of the board, the FCA, and the PRA, following their respective investigations, and the sanctions which they have each applied."
Barclays chairman John McFarlane described the bonus cut as a "very significant adjustment" and said Mr Staley retained the board's support.
Lawyers have complained in recent weeks that the regulators' decision not to ban Mr Staley would deter other would-be whistleblowers.
“This was an opportunity for UK regulators to say they will protect whistleblowers, and they blew it,” Erika Kelton, a partner and whistleblowing attorney at Phillips and Cohen, told The Telegraph.
One of Britain's leading support groups for whistleblowers, Whistleblowers UK, has said the outcome has already discouraged some of the people it works with from making disclosures.
In their joint statement the regulators reaffirmed their verdict that Mr Staley failed to act with due skill, care and diligence when he instructed his security team to locate the source of personal allegations made about a colleague in 2016.
Mr Staley apologised last year for his “mistake” in twice trying to identify the whistleblower.
He was cleared of the more serious charge of acting with “a lack of integrity”, which could have seen him stripped of the right to lead the bank. Barclays was not sanctioned.
The letter was treated by the bank as a whistleblow. Barclays’ own investigation found Mr Staley “honestly, but mistakenly, believed” his actions to try to identify who wrote the letter were permitted.
There has been some anger at the bank over how long the FCA investigation has taken, with one insider saying: “It has taken the FCA more than a year to come to the same conclusion that Barclays came to in just a few weeks – that Jes wasn’t guilty of the more serious charge.”
