Jerry del Missier resigns in wake of Libor scandal

Barclays COO and long-time derivatives industry figure steps down hours after resignation of chief executive Bob Diamond

jerry-del-missier

Jerry del Missier has resigned as chief operating officer (COO) of Barclays, hours after chief executive Bob Diamond also stepped down in the wake of the Libor manipulation scandal.

Del Missier had only been promoted to COO on June 22, having previously been co-chief executive of corporate and investment banking. In his new role, he had been charged with leading all operations and information technology activities across Barclays, as well as ensuring the bank meets new regulatory deadlines, including those relating to resolution planning and the UK's plans to ring-fence retail banking operations.

In an interview with Risk last month, just before his appointment, del Missier said these kinds of issues had become crucial for banks. "The dealers that will be successful will spend as much time thinking about after-trade issues as they used to on pre-trade issues. So thinking about how to shrink legacy portfolios to reduce risk-weighted assets, thinking about the importance of documentation and collateral – all these issues used to be shipped off to an operations function, but have become as important as product innovation used to be."

Del Missier joined Barclays in June 1997 from Bankers Trust in London, where he had been a senior managing director of derivatives products, responsible for the European business. He serves on the boards of numerous industry organisations and is a former board member of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. He has previously served as global head of rates, co-president and president of Barclays Capital.

Diamond stepped down this morning as a result of revelations last week that the bank submitted false Libor quotes between at least 2005 and 2009. On June 27, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US Department of Justice and the UK Financial Services Authority ordered Barclays to pay a total of around $450 million in fines and penalties to settle enforcement action that had uncovered repeated attempts to make "false, misleading or knowingly inaccurate submissions" concerning Libor and Euribor.

The bank today published supplementary information ahead of Diamond's appearance before the UK parliament's Treasury Committee on July 4. That material includes a copy of an email from Diamond that describes a conversation with Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England. The note states that Tucker questioned why the Libor quotes submitted by Barclays were much higher than other Libor panel members. According to that note, Tucker told Diamond that it "did not always need to be the case that we [Barclays] appeared as high as we have recently".

The Barclays material states this conversation was subsequently relayed to del Missier, and while Diamond "did not believe he received an instruction from Paul Tucker or that he gave an instruction to Jerry del Missier", del Missier thought otherwise and instructed the bank's Libor submitters not to keep Libor quotes so high.

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