Barclays are dishonest, corrupt, greedy thieves – do not give them your money

Last night I was at a talk in London given by one of Britain’s leading economists – but more of that tomorrow. Before the talk, I had the misfortune to meet and chat with two people who worked for Barclays Wealth. That’s the part of Barclays which “looks after” the money of customers with over £100,000 to invest.

Bob “The Banker” Diamond has left Barclays to spend more time with his hundreds of millions while leaving Barclays’ unfortunate shareholders (mainly us, through the money invested in our unit trusts and pension funds) many billions of pounds poorer. And Barclays’ new boss has made much of his efforts to change the culture at the bank away from greed, market manipulation, rate-rigging, money-laundering,  speculation and outright thieving back to “old-fashioned” banking. Don’t believe a word of it.

Three years ago, I was in the Bournemouth branch of Barclays to meet the manager about putting money into a 2-year fixed interest bond. While waiting outside the manager’s office, I heard two Barclays financial advisers (salespeople) laughing and joking about what they were going to say to a pensioner who had just lost half his life savings (a six-figure sum) after being advised by Barclays staff to put all his money into the dreadful Aviva Global Balanced Income Fund. That’s what prompted me to investigate the thoroughly corrupt financial services industry and write PILLAGED How they’re looting £413m a day from your savings and pensions.

The two people I met last night were (IMHO) truly awful human beings. They were both upper middle class (one was ex-army) so that they fitted in well with the types of customers they had to convince to put their money with Barclays. They admitted that their customers were unlikely to see their savings grow over the next few years – but that wasn’t their problem, they had sales targets to meet and sod any customers stupid enough to hand over any money to them.

I have also had some bruising exchanges with Barclays, in particular with my former relationship manager at Barclays, Richard Lynton-Jones. However, I probably shouldn’t detail these for legal reasons. Still, I’m sure Richard Lynton-Jones’s opinion of me is as high as my opinion of him.

Incidentally, when my 2-year bond matured, the money “got lost” for weeks and Barclays even claimed I had never invested any money with them in the first place. It took the threat of legal action for the money to be “found”.

Bob The Banker may have gone. But, as far as I can see, nothing at Barclays has changed – many Barclays staff are still (IMHO) a bunch of lying, thieving, corrupt, greedy scum and you should not give them your money.