The below is the memo sent to Barclays staff yesterday from John Varley, chief executive, explaining why he didn’t go for a taxpayer bailout. Remember, Barclays badly need British shareholders to approve this deal – so it will have been written with that in mind. This email is itself a comment on the times we are living – should a CEO of Barclays really need to explain why he preferred a private refinancing to part-nationalisation? It is evidently a response to the kicking he took mainly in the weekend press. We at Coffee House are right behind him.
P.S. I love the understatement: “our ability to do what our shareholders would expect of us would be compromised if Barclays was nationalised.” Translation: “We’d hardly do any better under the guidance of those morons who have just driven the British economy into the ground.”
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From: John Varley
To: restricted
Dear Colleague
There was a lot said and written in the media on Friday and over the weekend about our capital raising and I wanted to write today to share my perspective on what has been said so far (there will be more coverage in due course – of that I am in no doubt).
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