Barclays’ Diamond quits over rate rigging

LONDON, (Reuters) – Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond suddenly quit yesterday over an interest rate-rigging scandal that threatens to drag in a dozen more major lenders but suggested the Bank of England had encouraged his bank to manipulate the figures.

“The external pressure placed on Barclays has reached a level that risks damaging the franchise – I cannot let that happen,” said Diamond, 60. The terms of his severance were not announced, though Sky News said the bank would ask Diamond to forfeit almost 20 million pounds ($30 million) in bonuses.

Politicians and newspapers have zeroed in on the scandal – which revealed macho e-mails of bankers congratulating each other with offers of champagne for helping to fiddle figures – as an example of a rampant culture of wrongdoing in an industry that stayed afloat with huge taxpayer bailouts.

Barclays released an internal 2008 memo from Diamond, then head of its investment bank, suggesting that the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Paul Tucker, had given Barclays implicit encouragement to massage the interest figures lower during the peak of the financial crisis in order to present a better picture of the bank’s financial position.

According to the memo, Tucker told Diamond he had received calls from senior government officials. “It did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently,” Diamond said he had been told.

The Bank of England declined to comment, but analyst Ian Gordon at Investec said: “Based on first inspection it does seem to suggest that Barclays have received a message from the Bank of England which provided, to put it mildly, significant encouragement.

“So they’re maybe trying to share the blame but with justification. It raises a whole bunch of questions, and they’re very serious and they’re for the Bank of England to answer.”

SUDDEN REVERSAL

Diamond’s resignation was a sudden reversal, hours after the American said it was down to him to clear up the mess at Britain’s third-largest bank, fined nearly half a billion dollars for its part in manipulating the benchmark interest rate used to price everything from derivative instruments to home loans.

There was speculation in banking circles over whether Diamond, one of Europe’s highest paid bankers and once labelled by a Labour minister as the “unacceptable face” of banking, jumped or was pushed.

Prime Minister David Cameron had announced a parliamentary inquiry after calling for Diamond to take responsibility for the scandal, and the Financial Services Authority regulator had also brought pressure to bear on the board.

The government is now considering the introduction of criminal sanctions for serious misconduct in the management of a bank, the finance ministry said yesterday. FSA Chairman Adair Turner said on Tuesday he had had private conversations with Barclays since Friday morning about the need for “cultural change” at the bank.