FEW will soon forget Bob Diamond, the combative ex-boss of Barclays, Britain’s second-biggest bank, who beseeched bankers to “stop apologising” for causing the financial crisis in 2011, some years before the British public was ready to call a halt. The same cannot be said of his successor, Antony Jenkins, who tried valiantly to smooth things over after regulators demanded Mr Diamond’s dismissal in 2012. A decent chap who did a decent job, “Saint Antony”, as he was sometimes depicted, was himself ousted on July 8th. What will change as a result is far from clear.
Mr Jenkins was not the most inspiring banker. He lacked the Diamond-esque gumption of some of his peers, many of whom have energetically driven their institutions into the ground. A retail and commercial banker by training, his understated pitch focused on improving the bank’s “culture”—ie, discouraging traders from fiddling foreign-exchange markets...
from The Economist: Finance and economics http://ift.tt/1Hl4Qdg
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