Barclays fine £7.7 million and must payout £60million compensation

[leclerc]

BBC News - Barclays £60m compensation bill

Thousands of people investing their retirement savings were given poor advice by Barclays, which must now pay millions of pounds in compensation.
The bank has been fined £7.7m by the Financial Services Authority and told to pay £60m compensation to customers of Balanced and Cautious Funds.
One in seven of the 12,000 investors complained about the advice received from July 2006 to November 2008.
Barclays accepted it had "let customers down" and has apologised.

[leclerc]

Re: Barclays fine £7.7 million and must payout £60million compensation

FSA fines Barclays over investment failures
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
LONDON — Britain's financial watchdog said Tuesday it had fined Barclays bank £7.7 million and ordered it to compensate customers up to £60 million after they received inadequate advice on investing in funds.
"The Financial Services Authority has fined Barclays Bank plc £7.7 million (9.2 million euros, $12.3 million) for failures in relation to the sale of two funds," it said in a statement.
The FSA added that it had secured "as much as £60 million" in compensation for customers.
Barclays apologised and said it was determined to "put things right."
The FSA identified "a number of serious failings in the way" that Aviva's Global Balanced Income Fund and Global Cautious Income Fund were sold to 12,331 mostly retired or nearly-retired clients between July 2006 and November 2008.
These included "failing to ensure that training given to sales staff adequately explained the risks associated with the funds."
Additionally, Barclays failed "to ensure product brochures and other documents given to customers clearly explained the risks involved and could not mislead customers."
A total of £692 million was invested in the funds over the 29-month period.
"Thousands of investors, many of whom were seeking to invest their retirement savings, have suffered," said Margaret Cole, the FSA's managing director of enforcement and financial crime.
"To compound matters, Barclays failed to take effective action when it detected the failings at an early stage.
"Because of this, and given Barclays' position as one of the UK's major retail banks, we view these breaches as particularly serious and fully deserving of what is a very substantial fine," she added in the FSA statement.
In a separate statement, Paul McNamara, managing director of insurance and investments at Barclays, apologised to the bank's customers.
"We know that on this occasion we let our customers down and did not do all we could have done to meet the high standards that our customers expect from us and for this we are sorry."
The FSA last week fined state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland and its subsidiary NatWest a total of £2.8 million for failing to adequately handle customer complaints.


AFP: FSA fines Barclays over investment failures

[pallaz1851]

Re: Barclays fine £7.7 million and must payout £60million compensation


Barclays boss: Banks should be allowed to fail instead of being bailed out
“There was a period of remorse and apology for banks - I think that period needs to be over”
Bob Diamond Barclays chief executive

While he said he was grateful for the support given to the banking sector from central banks and governments, he stressed that Barclays had not taken any direct support from the taxpayer.

So, he just ran to the Middle East for a bailout instead!

From all of the outlets the ordinary person had pre 2008 for Banking, we are now down to 6 (six)? and they control approx 88% of all transactions, if we let RBS, Lloyds etc fail as he suggests, it means less competition for Barclays....he also knows that the 'Sheiks' pockets are deeper than the UK public, with all of their oil revenue we are paying for and he has an open 'tap'....how nice for him!!!!

Pity he doesn't pay more attention to looking after his 'customers' investments....84 year old pensioner invests £100,000 and watches it halve.......when she complains it takes ages for Barclays to acknowledge their incompetence and reimburse her....FSA induced...