A lawyer should run Barclays

"It may sound naïve to say that lawyers in their environment remain bound by their professional rules and ethics. But I believe it is largely true - not least a lawyer’s career is ended by a whiff of regulatory trouble"

In the words of John McEnroe (given we are in the middle of Wimbledon) you cannot be serious!!!!

Lawyers are no better regulated than bankers!!!

From the article:

"I think I have a solution to the crisis of confidence in our banks - starting with the current vacancy at Barclays, let us put lawyers at the helm of all the important ones"

Well, certainly an interesting idea worthy of discussion. I recall I suggested on one of these blogs that a non lawyer might run the Law Society - on the basis you need a risk taker or someone who can engage and influence people more. In light of the ongoing crisis of confidence in the legal profession, perhaps we can take all this a step further.

Bob Diamond appointed as Law Society chief.

Desmond Hudson moves to Barclays.

Perhaps not as mad as it sounds.

Hilarious stuff.

They had a lawyer in charge during most of this: John Varley

Thanks for your comments everyone (and for the retweets and shares).

Alan and Anon, you are quite right - John Varley was a lawyer before joining Barclays in the early eighties. His journey went via BZW (now Barcap), not the GC's chair, or the legal department.

The person I have in mind would have built their entire career, and the rewards it brought, in the law. I was thinking of two types - either the general counsel I know in financial services, whose careers were in legal departments; or someone like Vanni Treves - once senior partner of Macfarlanes, then high profile chair of crisis-struck Equitable Life.

There is also a line of thinking in the risk management world, expressed at a few conferences I've sat in on, that no-one should be able to make it to the top of a major business without spending time in the compliance function on the way.

I think that's worth looking at too.

Presumably the SRA are getting ready to investigate Varley now, just as they carried out that fearless investigation into Dame Tessa Jowell's husband when he had that problem with the Italians. Oh, silly me, they didn't investigate the cabinet minister's husband because they were too busy dragging Mr Anonymous High Street practitioner in front of the SDT for having a £10 deficit on client account following their intervention into his firm which cost £200,000. After all Mr Anonymous is an overwhelming threat to the good name of the profession.

Dear Sirs,

I have had a direct experience in dealing with the Barclays Senior Counsel in the past in a matter and I am not disclosing the names intentionally and not because I fear any defamation notices from Barclays. In that matter my aim was to extend the liability to the entire Barclays' Board due to the failures of one of their directors in his capacity as the Chairman of Company P. This Barclays' director was also the Chairman of Company P and it was to do with his failings in Corporate Governance under the parameters of the Companies Act, Company Directors' Disqualification Act, the Financial Services and Markets Act, the concept of Informed Investor as is understood under the Securities Acts and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the USA where Barclays' has informed investors. I was on a very weak wicket to begin with but saw that it might be in my interests if the Barclays Board was also sucked in to my personal dispute Company P and their board. What I received as a reply from the then Senior Counsel of Barclays' was shocking to say the least. She defended every one of the entities including Company P their Chairman because he was a Barclays' director and even proceeded to defending the lawyers of Company P who adduced notices I served on Barclays for a court matter thus establishing their status as the judicial equivalent of a "Coalition of the Willing" and thus continued to implicate Barclays' in my personal dispute with Company P. All that the Barclays' Senior Counsel needed to do was to disassociate themselves from the whole dispute at the first available opportunity when they received my first legal notice. Instead they did not reply and I sent a reminder. Thereafter to protect myself I bought the shares of both Barclays' and Company P to ward off any pressure tactics from these two companies. Barclays however outsourced my legal notices by handing it over to Company P's solicitors which is a reputed firm. My mistake was that I went over the top in attacking the Barclays' director who was the Chairman of Company P but to teach me a lesson Barclays handed over my exclusive notice to them later complaining about Company P to Company P's solicitors a few months later which helped them to secure an injunction from the High Court against me. Company P's solicitors then plagiarised my notices to make it incoherent by upsetting its original pagination (over which I had exclusive Copy Right including over its pagination) and by smudging exhibit numbers and secured the injunction which I challenged by invoking the Administrative Cum Supervisory Jurisdiction of the High Court over the documents and their integrity under the Civil Procedure Code asking the Judge to dissociate from the matter due to his purported oversight over the proceedings he alone presided over. The duty of the Barclays' legal department after the Board passed my legal notices to them was to deny their liability in my dispute with Company P after the Board delegated that matter to the legal department to deal with. The Barclays' legal department was mandated solely to serve the best interests of Barclays at all times and not to enjoin themselves in to my dispute with Company P howsoever persistent I was in implicating Barclays by stating that Barclays' was distinct and separate juristic person run by its own board and would not like to take sides in my dispute with Company P. I even raised the issue of the Board and their Company Secretary and Legal Department to be in concurrent guidance of each other but to no avail. Now tell me who failed Barclays more- the Board or their Legal Department comprising the Company Secretary and their Senior Counsel? Lawyers are not good business men and we can understand by looking at their balance sheets and their choice of a profession instead of a business with all the risks involved! I have been a solicitor bought over a couple of solicitor firms some time back and merged four of them together and had to battle all sorts of solicitors in the past and I know a lot about solicitor firms and their integrity having had Serious fraud office in my offices to investigate my predecessor principals. I have retained my Indian citizenship despite 16 years of my life in the UK and I believe I owe a duty to the UK for their hospitality despite the severity of some of the bad experiences I had. I am not going public due to this reason by contacting the media. But the saddest thing is that the law enforcement agencies do not realise that our banking system is the life blood of our entire economy and we should regulate it far more strictly than the Americans are doing. The balance sheet of Barclays is worth about $1.6 trillion (almost as big as the UK GDP or thereabouts!) after the takeover of the collapsed Lehman Brothers. Why are we not realising the fact that it is so easy to take over a country by acquiring our banks by foreign Sovereign Wealth Funds like the Qataris. I am glad the Serious Fraud Office has begun an investigation in to their secretive stake building! We should appreciate the fact that we are all so interconnected in commerce and economics in this globalised world and one serious mistake by our bankers could ruin us all. I hope and pray the Law Society Gazette and their editorial would high light these matters considering the fact that about 40% of our GDP is a derivative of our City based institutions. We cannot afford to have any “Old Boys Network” in the City! We may even have to learn the lessons from the American regulators who sent an 80 year Old Madoff to 20 years in prison or Raja Raja Ratam to some 10 years despite him bossing one of the largest gilt/hedge funds in the world or proceeding against Rajat Sharma of the Goldman Sachs. We need to learn these lessons fast and get our acts together or else we would be ruining our own future and that of our children if we have any!!! I’m sorry to have been so long winded and I would not have shared this personal experience had it not been with a magazine for lawyers as bringing in the media in to this out of the question as I could then betray Britain!