No level playing-field in banking
Lee Oliver
They tell us that, We lost our tails, I say it's all, Just wind in sails, Are we not men?
The departure of Jez Staley from Barclays yesterday has once again highlighted the inequities that exist in investment banking. However, it is dressed up, Staley clearly had little choice but to leave and he walked away with a handsome package. According to the Times, he's getting a pay-off of ￡2.4 million, ￡120,000 in pension contributions and costs to relocate to the United States.
Contrast this to the way the banks treated the many traders they threw under the bus as a result of the so-called FX scandal. Few, if any, got paid off and most lost their unvested bonuses. To make it even worse, even those who won their various legal actions against their former employers have had little chance of finding other jobs back in the industry. It seems that the more senior you are, the less the stinky stuff sticks after it hits the fan.
This is true even within the FX environment. The sudden disappearance of so many traders led to suggestions at the time that banks had a quota to fire - which they did with relish, despite shedding crocodile tears to imply they didn't. But several senior figures managed to walk away from their own misdemeanours, such as triggering option barriers, ripping off governments and central banks etc, either into comfortable retirement with their stock paid out, or in some cases other senior roles at different institutions. They were protected by the banks' ridiculous assertions that they didn't know what was going on, but that the 'scandal' was merely wrong doing by a few less senior individuals.
领英推荐
If you believe this is true, then you are living in a parallel universe. And while on the subject, why was it only traders who got fired? That's another whole pile of stinking poo, but it seems that some of those in sales got away with comparative murder - yet another iniquity. Why? We can but speculate, but it seems that in many cases sales people were protected because the banks didn't want to drag clients into the furore. Why be good if you can be lucky, as my old boss used to say.
Solicitor at Meaby & Co
3 年The Employment Tribunals, which determined the FX traders' claims for unfair dismissal, largely declined to address the possibility that their dismissals were part of a wider, scapegoating exercise by senior management to protect their positions, presumably on the grounds that it would be too hard to prove. To many involved in the claims, the circumstantial evidence conclusively pointed in that direction.