Marcus Agius has now finished giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee.
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- Former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond will receive a payoff of around £2m. David Cameron said that Diamond waiving his bonus was a sign that Barclays understood public concerns.
- Agius said that there was a conversation with the Governor of the Bank of England. Mervyn King told him that Diamond no longer had the confidence of the regulators and that Agius’ resignation was not enough.
- Agius said he wasn’t aware of the Diamond File Note about senior Whitehall officials raising concerns about Libor until earlier this year.
- Agius said that the board did not have discussions about Libor.
- After Diamond was appointed Agius raised concerns about Diamond’s lack of retail banking experience.
- A damning letter was sent to from the FSA to Barclays over their relationship.
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Andrew Tyrie thanks Marcus Agius for his time.
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Agius compares the competitive spirit of Barclays’ bank to Roger Federer, not sure if that’s the right metaphor to use.
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When asked if he believes Barclays is misunderstood, Agius says that “we are a honest, customer centred and competitive organisation.”
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John Thurso says he knows Agius as a man of hnou and asks in hindsight what he would've done differently.
Agius says he is not happy with where he is at the moment.
"I am not happy to be where I am. I have tried to think how I and others have acted at different points. It's very difficult to say what you would have done differently."
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Agius said he was aware of potentially criminality in Libor-rigging in the early part of 2011. Diamond in his evidence said he wasn't aware of it until recently.
Agius explains Diamond was a potential witness so was excluded from Barclays' internal investigation into Libor.
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The Guardian's financial editor Nils Pratley tweets in that the Treasury Select committee got their scheduling wrong.
@NilsPratley: Would have been better for cttee to call Agius before Diamond.
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Question marks are being raised as to whether or not Diamond retained focus on retail banking and consumer outcomes.
Andrea Leadsom points out that Agius himself was concerned with Diamond's lack of retail banking experience in a note.
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Andrea Leadsom says that Agius has raised Diamond's lack of experience in retail banking and there raised a concern of integrity.
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Agius: A significant minority of employees in Barclays work in investment banking compared to retail banking.
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Tyrie asks if the culture of Barclays affected other banks.
Agius says he says he couldn’t possibly comment.
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Mark Garnier turns his attention to the compliance function in Barclays. He cites a whistleblower from the Independent saying that procedures exist that there were procedures in place that ensures that if there is a problem that it reaches the top and that this type of thing doesn't happen.
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Teresa Pearce points out that Marcus Agius accepted the role of Chair of the BBA whilst Brclays was being investigated and asks if Agius saw a conflict of interest there.
Agius said that many other banks were also being investigated and denies there being a conflict.
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Prime Minister David Cameron has said that Diamond waiving his bonus is a sign that Barclays understands public concern and that banking culture must change.
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Ben Chu from the Independent tweets:
@BenChu_: Diamond contract says he's entitled to 6 months pay. Agius and board are offering him 12 months. That can't stand
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Agius: “I left [Diamond's] house confident that he would resign if he hadn't resigned already”
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Fallon quizzes Agius on whether the board had discussions about Libor.
Agius: No.
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Fallon: If Mr Diamond was worried enough to tell Mr Tucker this (Libor) why didn’t he tell you?
Agius: "That’s a question for him.
"I stayed connected with the senior management but I did not make any executive decisions. It was not my job."
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Fallon asks if he was aware of government concerns of Barclays’ Libor submissions. Agius says he wasn’t aware and that Diamond did not have discussions about it.
He said he knew of the existence of the File Note earlier this year.
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Agius agrees that the public would find it difficult to understand how the chairman and chief executive did not know about Libor. He said “yes I understand, it shouldn’t of happened.”
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Stewart Hosie notes that Barclays were watching the Libor rates of other banks and asks why it didn’t occur to anyone to ask those banks if those Libor rates were being manipulated.
Hosie: It seems inconceivable that when this is being recognised within Barclays that no one sought to ask
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Agius denies that the people in Barclays are denial of the scale of the Libor scandal.
Agius: Not in denial. Should have been detected, it was isolated in one area, which was under-monitored. It did not occur to me [to investigate whether Libor manipulation was occuring]. We should have asked those questions but at the time we were at a moment of existential risk.
Market was malfunctioning, it made us look like we were having more difficulty in funding than we were.
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Agius: “I’m not seeking to mislead you. I can’t speak for what Mr Diamond said”.
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James Lyons from the Mirror tweets in
@MirrorJames: "Bob Diamond surely facing recall to Treasury select"
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Love asks Agius if those working at Barclays were “so out of touch that it took a meeting with the Bank of England to get Barclays to do the right thing.”
Agius stresses the view that shareholders did not feel that Bob Diamond should go.
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Agius says the achievements of Barclays over the years have been remarkable and the shareholders also hold that view.
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Andy Love turns his attention to Libor manipulation.
Agius said he was first aware of an investigation into Libor in April 2010.
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Tyrie quizzes Agius on his resignation.
Agius said he went to see the governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King who told him that Diamond no longer had the support of the regulator.
There was a discussion with the board followed by a phone conversation to King explaining what the board was going to do.
King said that was satisfactory.
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Ruffley rephrases his question to "do you think "do you think you were a good chairman or a poor chairman?"
Agius says his response to the FSA leter was the right response, prompting Ruffley says he's not very good at answering binary questions.
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Agius said that they took the letter very seriously. However when quizzed if he had a discussion with Diamond about the letter. He says he doesn’t remember.
Ruffley asks: What do you say to people who say you’re not good at your job?
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David Ruffley reads out a letter from the FSA, the “Dear Marcus” letter.
Ruffley asks: “Have you ever received in your professional career a letter as damning as this?”
Agius: “I don’t regard this as damning I regard this as a firm letter from the regulator.”
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Agius “I resigned because I felt ultimately responsible as the keeper of the bank’s reputation.”
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Agius says Bob Diamond will walk away with half of his £1.35m annual salary.
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Pat MacFadden: Do accept that the different accounts Diamond has given us compared to the letters we’ve received place a question mark over what we’re hearing from Barclays?
Agius: That’s a leap too far
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do you accept that these different i
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Barclays have released a statement on Diamond's severance pay
Mr Diamond has voluntarily offered to waive all of his unvested deferred bonus awards and long term incentive share awards. This is in addition to his previous decision to forgo any consideration for an annual bonus this year. The Board has accepted this offer, and all of Mr Diamond's outstanding unvested deferred bonus awards and long-term incentives will lapse, with no compensation made in respect of the lapsed awards.
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John Mann challenges Agius on a letter from Lord Turner of the FSA claiming that Barclas tries to "seek advantage" from regulators".
"And yet we have this letter, which is the most extraordinary letter, on the most serious of issues to your bank at the time Diamond was in charge. He has calculatedly and deliberately misled this committee. It cannot be true that Mr Diamond forgot this letter."
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Yesterday Andrea Leadsom grilled Paul Tucker on why the Bank of England did not minute or take note of phone calls. She reasoned that given the urgency of the economic crisis that she couldn’t understand why the BoE didn’t think to record meetings or make records of phone calls.
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Agius is looking uncomfrotable with John Mann's questioning.
Mann has asked Agius for a copy of the recording of the board meeting when they discussed the FSA's comments about the "tone at the top".
Agius has said that they can's have the minutes because they don't take recordings of board meetings.
"How convenient" says Mann
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John Mann asks Agius if Barclays briefed journalists that he was going to make the announcement (re Diamond's payoff) in relation to the committee.
Agius said he had no knowledge of that and he would be upset if that was the case.
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Tyrie asks if Diamond misled the committee over Barclays’ relationship with the FSA.
Tyrie says that from transcripts that the relationship appears to be strained in stark contrast to Diamond who defined “strained” as “a conversation”.
Agius: I don't accept that we had desperate relationship with FSA. Strained would be fine. They said to us: 'When we deal with you, you try too hard. You are testing the goodwill of our staff'
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Agius: Our job is to operate within the regulations and do everything right an proper, but I understand we operate in a competitive industry and our job is to work within those constraints and do the best we can for all of our stakeholders
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Tyrie reads out part of an FSA report which said that “Barclays has a tendency to seek advantage from complex structures”
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Agius: When we (the board) discuseed the relationship with the FSA, the conclusion with the board was that it served no useful purpose other than to have a positive and constructive relationship with our regulators
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Diamond in his evidence last week said that the FSA were pleased with the tone at the top.
Tyrie asks Agius if Diamond had “mislead” the Committee in his evidence.
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Tyrie turns his attention to a report by the FSA on the appointment of Diamond, which placed "onsiderable emphasis on the CEO setting the culture, risk appetite and control frame of a bank"
Tyrie asks if he thinks Diamond got it wrong.
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Michael Fallon quizzes Agius on his redacted statements.
Agius said that the original statements contained commercially sensistive information ("not legally sensitive?" Quizzes Fallon), and that it felt apropriate to redact those statements.
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Agius said the maximum amount Diamond would’ve been entitled to was valued at £20m.
"Shortly before I came here I received a notice of what would happen. Bob Diamond has voluntarily decided to forgo any deferred bonuses to which he otherwise would have been entitled. The maximum amount [of the bonus he could have got] would be £20m. I'm glad that he has done it."
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Andrew Tyrie allows Agius to make adiscuss in relation to his resignation over the Libor scandal.
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Barclays Chairman and non-executive director Marcus Agius has now taken his seat in the Wilson Room in fron of the Treasury Select Committee.
He is expected to be questioned on the Libor scandal and Bob Diamond's payoff.
Sky News confirms that Barclays has agreed to a payoff of around £2m with the former Barclays CEO.
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