Ex-Barclays banker says group ‘wrestled’ with Qatari fee options
‘I’m clearly not that clever,’ Roger Jenkins tells court
A senior banker has told a London court how he and his colleagues had “wrestled” with various proposals about how to meet Qatari demands for additional fees as the Gulf state injected emergency funding into Barclays during its 2008 capital raising.
Roger Jenkins, who as former head of Middle East was the “gatekeeper” of Barclays’ relationship with Qatar, is standing trial over his role in helping negotiate £4bn of emergency funding from Qatar into the bank which helped it avoid a state bailout during the 2008 financial crisis.
On Monday Mr Jenkins told a London court that Qatar was demanding an additional 1.75 per cent fee on top of the 1.5 per cent commission fee paid to all investors who took part in its June 2008 capital raising.
The Serious Fraud Office alleges that Mr Jenkins and two other bankers negotiated secret side deals — known as advisory services agreements — with Qatar for the additional commission as it injected emergency funding into Barclays. The three men all deny wrongdoing.
Mr Jenkins’ defence has been that Barclays was getting genuine services from Qatar, potentially worth billions of pounds, by striking the side deals to expand Barclays’ business in the Middle East. This was seen as a solution to the additional money demanded by the Qataris.
On Monday, Mr Jenkins was cross-examined by SFO prosecutor Ed Brown QC about why no one at Barclays had immediately come up with the idea for an advisory services agreement with Qatar if such an agreement “was so honest and a great advantage to Barclays”.
“I’m clearly not that clever,” Mr Jenkins replied. He added: “I am a very experienced banker, I have a moral compass. I did not think about an advisory services agreement and nor did anyone else . . . It was only in the context we had with the Qataris where I could see it would cost them not a cent to do it,” he said. However he said that he and colleagues “wrestled” with the “optics” of how such an agreement would look to other investors.
Mr Jenkins told the court that when the idea of an advisory services agreement was proposed on June 11 2008 there were suggestions it could include introductions to the bank and co-investments. “I jumped at this, it was a great opportunity, who wouldn’t want that opportunity?” he said, and added: “I had no reason to doubt the money you could make from Qatar was very, very, very substantial.”
Mr Jenkins is on trial alongside ex-colleagues Tom Kalaris, who ran Barclays’ wealth unit, and Richard Boath, the former co-head of Barclays’ investment bank’s financial services group. All three deny fraud charges. The trial continues.