Barclays PLCon Thursday named the head of its retail and business banking operations as itsnew chief executive, as shares in the group dropped following news of aninvestigation into an overseas investment deal.
The bank announced that Antony Jenkins, 51, would fill the post vacated by theresignation of Bob Diamond in the wake of a scandal over attempts to manipulatea key interest rate index.
Jenkins takes over just as the bank has been hit by more bad news. Barclaysdisclosed Wednesday that Britain's Serious Fraud Office was looking into thebank's payments to Qatar Holdings LLC when Barclays raised more than 5 billionpounds ($8 billion) of emergency capital at the height of the global financialcrisis, funds which saved Barclays from needing a government bailout.
Gary Greenwood, an analyst at Shore Capital, said the investigation"further highlights Barclays' somewhat murky past under the previousleadership and the need for the new management team to come in and clean up thecompany's culture, processes and image."
Barclays shares were down 1.7 percent at 183.1 pence in early trading inLondon, the first market reaction to the investigation and Jenkins'appointment.
Barclays is also assumed to be a target of a Serious Fraud Office investigationof manipulation of the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR), a market indexwhich sets the price of a wide range of financial instruments includingmortgages.
So far, Barclays is the only bank which has been identified as submitting falsereports of the rates it expected to pay to borrow from other banks, althoughother banks are known to be under investigation. Barclays was fined $453million by U.S. and British agencies in June, and Diamond resigned on July 3.
"We have made serious mistakes in recent years and clearly failed to keeppace with our stakeholders' expectations," Jenkins said.
"We have an obligation to all of those stakeholders - customers, clients,shareholders, colleagues and broader society - and a unique opportunity torestore Barclays' reputation by making it the 'go to' bank in all of our chosenmarkets."