General

Barclays leadership crumbles, leaving a trail of ridiculous macho emails

Bob Diamond, the chief executive officer of Barclays PLC, and his chief operating officer, Canadian Jerry del Missier, stepped down amid allegations of interest-rate rigging.

Diamond and Del Missier are the third and fourth executive at the firm to quit after a string of private emails and text messages disclosed earlier this week revealed that Barclay’s bankers were allowing clients to trade at artificially low interest rates in an effort to paint a better picture of the bank’s financial position.

One message, sent by a Barclays banker to a trader after fixing a key lending rate, reads: “Done … for you big boy.”

The client responded: “Dude, I owe you big time! Come over one day after work and I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger.”

U.K.-based Barclays has agreed to pay US$453 million in fines to U.K. and U.S. regulators to settle its part of an investigation into whether banks manipulated the London Interbank Lending Rate, known as Libor, which they use to lend to each other. Barclays’ is the highest-profile company to come under fire in the interest rate-rigging scandal, which is thought to involve more than a dozen major international banks.

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