Jes Staley: account of relationship with Epstein comes under scrutiny | Barclays

Regulators will compare the version of events he shared with Barclays with emails from JP Morgan When it was revealed last year that Jes Staley had sailed his luxury yacht to a meeting with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on his private Caribbean island, the Barclays boss told colleagues he was going nowhere.

Analysis

Jes Staley: account of relationship with Epstein comes under scrutiny

Regulators will compare the version of events he shared with Barclays with emails from JP Morgan

When it was revealed last year that Jes Staley had sailed his luxury yacht to a meeting with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on his private Caribbean island, the Barclays boss told colleagues he was “going nowhere”.

But on Monday Staley resigned as chief executive of Barclays after the board said it had been made aware of the preliminary conclusions of an investigation by City regulators into how he had characterised his relationship with Epstein to Barclays. Staley intends to contest the report’s findings.

Staley’s relationship with Epstein – who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex-trafficking underage girls – had dragged Barclays into a reputational crisis that one of its largest investors said led to a “destabilising situation, which has become a circus”. The activist investor Sherborne Investors, run by Edward Bramson, last year formally called on the board to remove Staley, 64, as CEO “as soon as possible.”

Staley survived the attempted ousting, even though it followed hot on the heels of a scandal in which Staley had ordered his staff to launch a transatlantic investigation to try to unmask a whistleblower.

Now his character and the transparency surrounding Epstein are under examination by regulators, who are comparing the version of events Staley shared with Barclays’ board (and the bank in turn shared with investigators) with a trove of emails that Staley’s former employer, the US bank JP Morgan, has handed to the authorities.

“Obviously I thought I knew him well, and I didn’t. For sure, with hindsight, with what we know now, I deeply regret having any relationship with Jeffrey,” Staley said last year, adding that he had been “very transparent” with investigators, who he said were focusing on his “transparency and openness with the bank”.

Staley had known Epstein since at least 2000, when he was the boss of JP Morgan’s private bank and Epstein was one of his most valued ultra-wealthy clients. He has said his relationship with Epstein started to “taper off” when he left JP Morgan in 2013.

However, in April 2015, Staley and his wife, Deby, sailed to Epstein’s private island, Little St James, in the US Virgin Islands, on their 91ft wenge wood yacht Bequia.

Staley describes Bequia, which is named after the Caribbean island on which the couple spent their honeymoon, as “not a big yacht, but it is a big boat”. While the yacht was designed primarily for relaxed cruising, Staley sailed it across the Atlantic to complete one of his “bucket list” life goals, and won the Loro Piana Superyacht regatta in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, in 2013.

Staley was born in Boston, and remains an avid Red Sox fan, but moved cities frequently during his childhood because of his father’s job at PQ Corporation, a chemicals company. Barclays has agreed to pay for relocation costs if he moves back to the US, where he owns an apartment on Park Avenue in Manhattan and a house in Southampton, the Long Island playground of the Wall Street elite.

Friends have described Staley as not your typical brash, boastful investment banker, but a sensitive, reflective and respectful soul who concentrates on building strong teams around him rather than bullying subordinates.

Staley, who was christened James but has been known since childhood as Jes, joined a forerunner of JP Morgan straight after graduating from Bowdoin College, Maine, with a degree in economics in 1979.

He had been widely tipped as frontrunner to succeed Jamie Dimon as CEO of JP Morgan, but is said to have grown bored with waiting for Dimon, who has been CEO since 2005, to leave. He left JP Morgan in 2013 to join the New York hedge fund BlueMountain Capital as managing partner and joined Barclays in 2015.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJqlqLavsdKsZmtoYmZ8r7vVaGdqZ5qawG6%2F05qjnrFdmr20wMSipWark6fCtbXNsmSrnZequaLAzqtkm5mimLmixdI%3D

 Share!