These are tough times to be a bank CEO. Barclay’s CEO Anthony Jenkins was unceremoniously — some might say brutally — sacked by his board today. Chairman John McFarlane didn’t beat around the bush in an interview with the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed, confirming and explaining the firing. “Barclays is not efficient, we are not productive, we are cumbersome,” McFarlane said. “We have very large bureaucracy and personal accountability is not as high as we need it to be.”
Jenkins replaced hard-charging Bob Diamond three years ago in the midst of the interest-rate rigging scandal. With a background in retail banking, he had been dubbed “Saint Anthony” for his efforts to bring ethics back to the business. So much for that. The directors who drove his ouster were clearly concerned about his lack of attention to the investment bank. “He is a tremendously successful retail banker,” McFarlane told the BBC, damning with faint praise. “What we really need is profit improvement and returns improvement and that is a different skill.”
Meanwhile, the China market meltdown continues, with nearly half the shares in Shanghai now on a trading halt. As Fortune’s Stephen Gandel reports, the collapse is also spilling over into the U.S. markets, as the U.S. listed stocks of Chinese companies take a dive.
More below.
| Alan Murray | |
| @alansmurray | |
| alan.murray@fortune.com |
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