A regulatory ruling that your conduct was “reckless and lacked integrity” is meant to be a highly serious matter for a bank. Thus it was understandable two years ago that Barclays decided to appeal against a £50m fine imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority that related to the disclosure of controversial payments to Qatari investors as part of a 2008 fund raising during the depths of the great financial crisis.
Even in 2022, events from 2008 will have felt like ancient history, but if Barclays thought it did nothing wrong, there was still the principle of the thing – and, one assumes, a sense of an obligation to defend the reputations of former executives given that the Serious Fraud Office’s cases against four of them (and the bank itself) had already failed.
