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Barclays Activist Investor Presses Chairman to End ‘Disruption’

Barclays Activist Investor Presses Chairman to End ‘Disruption’

(Bloomberg) -- A top Barclays Plc shareholder is pushing Chairman Nigel Higgins to end the British lender’s “cycle of disruption” as Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley faces another regulatory probe.

Activist investor Edward Bramson said the bank’s board should take “seriously” the latest scrutiny over Staley’s ties to the deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a letter sent last week and seen by Bloomberg News.

The investigation is “another example of governance weakness that has led, inevitably, to the recurrent public disappointments and embarrassments which have plagued Barclays for so long,” Bramson said in the letter to his fund’s backers. He offered no specific remedies for addressing these issues.

Barclays Activist Investor Presses Chairman to End ‘Disruption’

Bramson’s criticism adds to growing questions over the future of Staley, who the board has said they fully support. The CEO could leave the lender as soon as next year, people with knowledge of the plan said.

Barclays disclosed this month that British regulators are probing how Staley characterized his relationship with Epstein, who died in his prison cell last year. The news came alongside earnings that highlighted headwinds around profit targets, and almost two years after Staley was fined by U.K. regulators for his attempts to uncover a whistle-blower.

Spokesmen for both Bramson and Barclays declined to comment on the letter.

Bramson’s Sherborne Investors Management LP holds an approximate 5.5% stake in Barclays, having first invested in early 2018 before demanding a seat on the board to advocate for strategic changes, including a retreat from investment banking. He lost his bid for a seat last year while Staley plowed ahead with his plans to compete with Wall Street.

“We have the necessary resources to engage constructively with the company for as long as necessary,” Bramson said in the letter, adding he hasn’t seen Higgins for about a year.

Staley has been the key architect of expansion at Barclays investment bank since taking the reins in 2015. Bramson, who used last week’s letter to repeat his criticism of the unit’s returns, said that “after four years of the current strategy and capital allocation policy, the outcome so far has not been encouraging.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Stefania Spezzati in London at sspezzati@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Marion Dakers

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