Thursday will be the third annual shareholder meeting of Barclays at which Antony Jenkins has sat in the chief executive’s chair. Could it also be his last?
At the end of the meeting, 75-year-old Sir David Walker will hand over as chairman to 67-year-old John McFarlane.
There are suggestions that a change in the driving seat might be a good idea.
McFarlane has form in this area. He was pivotal in the departure of Andrew Moss from insurer Aviva in 2012. Indeed, he acted as executive chairman for a while until Mark Wilson was identified and arrived as chief executive.
Jenkins has certainly held the fort since Bob Diamond’s departure in the wake of the Libor scandal in August 2012. He has successfully lowered Barclays’ profile, reduced the scale of its investment bank and dispensed with the name Barclays Capital.
But Barclays has not done as well as some of its shareholders might have hoped. Since Jenkins’s appointment, its shares have risen by some 60% while Lloyds’ are up by 160% and Royal Bank of Scotland’s some 75% .
Nor is Jenkins completely clear of the banking scandals which saw off his predecessors. PPI mis-selling happened, in part, on his watch, as did forex rigging.
McFarlane will not act in haste. But his review of the chief executive’s performance has already begun. Once the matrix is completed it might well signal Jenkins’s departure.
Beware Lloyds’ other investors
Apart from the fact that a discounted retail offer of shares in Lloyds Banking Group raises the morally dubious question of transferring wealth from poor taxpayers to better-off ones, it also presents a potential pitfall.
The Conservatives are planning to offer £4 billion of Lloyds shares to private investors at a 5% discount so long as that is above the 73.6p which was the average buying price when it was rescued by the taxpayers.
Lloyds shares today stand at 78.7p. They only need to fall to 77.3p for that 5% discount no longer to be possible.
It is not inconceivable that existing shareholders could push the share price down below that level just ahead of the retail sale. If that were to happen presumably all bets would be off.
Perhaps the Conservatives should remind themselves that although the taxpayer still owns just less than 22% of Lloyds, 78% is owned by other investors. Let them exercise their voice.
