Guy giving Bob Diamond a hard time on SKY now

[Asterix]

Who is this prick? Regardless of the validity of the whole Select Committee - the bloke speaking at the moment is so overtly aggressive when asking almost pointless questions and always interrupting when BD answers - seems to have a personal agenda rather than looking at the big picture.

Who is he?

I'm surprised BD hasn't told him to do one - he's been very restrained.

What a cock!

[Asterix]

Found him - David Ruffley. MP for Bury St. Edmunds.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3020587/...

Hmmm.

Edited by Asterix on Tuesday 11th January 11:12

[bobbylondonuk]

Great... A suicidal MP is sitting in a committee to assess the banking industry in UK.

[ShadownINja]

Why aren't they interrogating the RBS guy instead? I thought Barclays was owned by someone in the Middle East.

[Soovy]

Showboating by a failure of a man, trying to score points to compensate for his failure in life.

Bob Diamond is a very very clever guy, who earns every penny. I've met him twice, and done work for him. He won't stand for this. Don't be at ALL surprised when Barclays moves its HQ to Asia next year.

Edited by Soovy on Tuesday 11th January 12:14

[turbobloke]

Bonus Envy

[chris watton]

others have noticed, too;

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidhughes/1000...

[Oakey]

I heard the guy on the BBC news cheerfully referring to this as 'banker bashing'. "Let's go back to the banker bashing". tt.

[Soovy]

Diamond sits there knowing that he never needs to work again. Ever.

Barclays will HQ in Asia soon. Bye bye scum UK.

[bobbylondonuk]

Soovy said:

Diamond sits there knowing that he never needs to work again. Ever.

Barclays will HQ in Asia soon. Bye bye scum UK.

That is not what he just said to the committee. I have a feeling that the govt will convince them to stay..that will depend on election 2015. If the tories get in again, then the banks will stay.

[wolves_wanderer]

Remind me what business of MPs it is how much a private employee earns in this country? Bob Diamond should have told him to do one.

[fido]

Soovy said:

Bob Diamond is a very very clever guy, who earns every penny. I've met him twice, and done work for him. He won't stand for this. Don't be at ALL surprised when Barclays moves its HQ to Asia next year.

Agree - he is the one of best in the business and an inspiration to people who work for him. Haven't actually chat to him directly but I walked into his office by accident.

[Busa_Rush]

fido said:

Soovy said:

Bob Diamond is a very very clever guy, who earns every penny. I've met him twice, and done work for him. He won't stand for this. Don't be at ALL surprised when Barclays moves its HQ to Asia next year.

Agree - he is the one of best in the business and an inspiration to people who work for him. Haven't actually chat to him directly but I walked into his office by accident.

I heard it too . . . he can't be that good if he's not able to say a few words to appease a stropy MP. The MP or whoever was asking him if he was grateful to the British Taxpayers for their support - he couldn't simply say yes, we are grateful. That would have taken the wind out of the sails of this chap and that would be it. Instead he said he was grateful to the central banks etc . . .

Regardless of the technicalities and rights and wrongs, this was going to be widely reported in the press, he should have just said yes, we're very grateful. He could then have gone on to thank his customers etc and turned it into a positive rather than the "Banker hates the British Taxpayer" story which will no doubt appear in the Daily Wail tomorrow.

[fido]

Busa_Rush said:

He could then have gone on to thank his customers etc and turned it into a positive rather than the "Banker hates the British Taxpayer" story which will no doubt appear in the Daily Wail tomorrow.

I'm sure he thanks his customers everyday - not the customers here, but the globals clients that create their profits. I think we're operating in two realities here - the showboating by UK politicians to appease the baying public, and the reality that Barclays is a successful global business that has operations in many countries. I think he's said in a previous interview [feel free to dig it out] that he doesn't understand why the UK press enjoys bashing a successful UK company, so probably treats what happens in UK politico-press land as an anomaly - it's certainly the message we got on the regular announcements

[JagLover]

Busa_Rush said:

I heard it too . . . he can't be that good if he's not able to say a few words to appease a stropy MP. The MP or whoever was asking him if he was grateful to the British Taxpayers for their support - he couldn't simply say yes, we are grateful. That would have taken the wind out of the sails of this chap and that would be it. Instead he said he was grateful to the central banks etc . . .

Regardless of the technicalities and rights and wrongs, this was going to be widely reported in the press, he should have just said yes, we're very grateful. He could then have gone on to thank his customers etc and turned it into a positive rather than the "Banker hates the British Taxpayer" story which will no doubt appear in the Daily Wail tomorrow.

I haven't seen his appearance but since Barclays didn't take taxpayers cash he owes thanks to the BOE for the actions they took in the credit crunch but nothing (directly) to the British taxpayer. By saying such a thing he would create an impression that Barclays was dependent for its survival on the british government, who should then implicity have a say in how it was run. It was to avoid this that Barclays was at great pains to seek outside investors when it ran into trouble rather than go to the Uk government for help.

[turbobloke]

Busa_Rush said:

fido said:

Soovy said:

Bob Diamond is a very very clever guy, who earns every penny. I've met him twice, and done work for him. He won't stand for this. Don't be at ALL surprised when Barclays moves its HQ to Asia next year.

Agree - he is the one of best in the business and an inspiration to people who work for him. Haven't actually chat to him directly but I walked into his office by accident.

I heard it too . . . he can't be that good if he's not able to say a few words to appease a stropy MP. The MP or whoever was asking him if he was grateful to the British Taxpayers for their support - he couldn't simply say yes, we are grateful. That would have taken the wind out of the sails of this chap and that would be it. Instead he said he was grateful to the central banks etc . . .

Regardless of the technicalities...

Would one of the technicalities be that Barclays didn't need government i.e. taxpayer support in terms of £bailout? I thought Barclays went to the middle east instead, but had access to the government’s toxic asset insurance scheme.

As I'm not a City worker I may be wrong in thinking that this is NOT taxpayer cash bailout territory but (as the name suggests) insurance.

If so then BD was quite reticent in not saying anything to make the MP look foolish.

[Mikeyboy]

Used to work for Diamond when he started at Barclays. He went about business, which was cutting whole departments at the time with a sense of calm that made most of us at ease about out futures. Not that common I now know.

[munky]

Soovy said:

Diamond sits there knowing that he never needs to work again. Ever.

Barclays will HQ in Asia soon. Bye bye scum UK.

Wouldn't the US make more sense? BarCap is quite US-centric, post-Lehman.. there was an article in the Economist (Dec 4th, I think?) about which UK banks would go where. Their analysis was Barlays to the US, HSBC and Standard Chartered to Asia (both make more profits from Asia than UK)

[ellroy]

ShadownINja said:

Why aren't they interrogating the RBS guy instead? I thought Barclays was owned by someone in the Middle East.

Borrowed funds from the Middle East, at a higher rate than they would have paid to HMG, and have already paid it back with a nice fat profit for those who lent.

As a side issue this opened up access to a series of new markets in the Middle East that are growing far quicker than the western economies will manage in the near future, if ever.

RED is not daft by any stretch of the imagination.

[steve singh]

ellroy said:

ShadownINja said:

Why aren't they interrogating the RBS guy instead? I thought Barclays was owned by someone in the Middle East.

Borrowed funds from the Middle East, at a higher rate than they would have paid to HMG, and have already paid it back with a nice fat profit for those who lent.

As a side issue this opened up access to a series of new markets in the Middle East that are growing far quicker than the western economies will manage in the near future, if ever.

RED is not daft by any stretch of the imagination.

They were already in the middle east markets from which they got their funding.

Diamond is a legend in investment banking circuits, but the city felt far more comfortable with varley.