Introduction: The Evolution from Trust to the Risk Industry
The history of Barclays is a chronicle of a fundamental shift: the transition from banking as a craft of trust to banking as a risk industry. This article analyzes how the deregulation of the City transformed the bank into a profit-generating machine where reputation became merely a depreciated asset. You will learn why systemic scandals were not accidents, but the result of specific institutional incentives. We trace the paths of reformers and pragmatists, from Bob Diamond to Jes Staley, and examine which "prostheses of reason" might save modern finance from a loss of legitimacy.
The Big Bang and the Era of the Profit Cult
The Big Bang of 1986 abolished fixed commissions and opened London to global capital, leading to the Americanization of the British City. In this environment, Barclays De Zoete Wedd (BZW) was born—an institutional experiment where the cultures of loyal corporate banking and aggressive market logic collided. Bob Diamond, the architect of Barclays Capital’s power, embodied the belief in the universal banking model and technological dominance. In this vision, financial leverage ceased to be just a technical ratio of assets to capital and became an axiological measure of the system's fragility. High leverage allowed for astronomical profits but made the bank a hostage to minor market fluctuations, shifting systemic risk onto the public.
The Sabotage of Credibility and the Failure of Ethical Renewal
A results-oriented culture led to pathologies symbolized by the Libor scandal. The manipulation of this key benchmark was a form of epistemological sabotage—the falsification of a metric that enables global financial coordination. Simultaneously, mis-selling flourished, involving the systemic offering of toxic products (such as PPI) to customers. The client ceased to be a partner and became a "margin carrier." Antony Jenkins, who attempted to fix the bank through the RESPECT values program, ultimately failed. His ethical reform could not overcome the system's architecture: as long as bonuses and promotions depended on short-term results, moral sermons remained merely background noise to the "clinking of chips" in the financial casino.
Universal Banking in the Grip of Regulation
Jes Staley attempted to restore the credibility of the universal model by relying on pragmatism and revenue diversification. However, universal banking remains a structure of tension, where toxic patterns from investment markets easily seep into the retail sector. Currently, the European Commission is pursuing technocratic risk control, treating financial instruments like explosives that require strict accounting. Within the European Parliament, a debate rages: the center-right (EPP) defends the free market, the social democrats (S&D) condemn the privatization of profits, and the Greens demand that finance be subordinated to planetary goals. The proposed response to these crises involves prostheses of reason: deferred compensation (clawbacks), a hard separation of advisory services from sales, and basing benchmarks on hard transactional data.
Summary: Truthfulness as a New Foundation
Modern banking is moving away from the shareholder value paradigm, which corrupted incentives, toward a new virtue: truthfulness. The case of Jes Staley demonstrates that epistemic risk—misleading the supervisor—has become fatal for bankers. The history of Barclays serves as a warning: it is easy to lose one's moral compass in the labyrinth of financial innovation. Will banks, insured against failure, become too big to be held accountable? Or will the fear of losing regulatory credibility prove stronger than the temptation of profit? Today, it is not just capital, but the transparency of the relationship with the regulator that constitutes the ultimate foundation of systemic stability.
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