Barclays: A page to be updated

[french frank]

The BBC derives a significant part of it's budget from profits on global programme sales. In that sense it has to compete, and thus behave as a commercial organization.

I've already quoted the relevant figures:

Licence fee revenue (2010/11): £3.5bn
Total returns from BBC Worldwide (i.e. from programme sales, licensing &c) to BBC public services: £183m. That leaves a nice bit of change from the cost of collecting the licence fee (£124m), which is useful, but a 'significant' part of its budget?

BBC Worldwide does 'behave as a commercial organization', which is what it is. But the BBC as a publicly funded public service broadcaster has legal limits on its ability to compete commercially with other broadcasters. Companies that have to raise their own revenue from advertising rightly consider it as 'unfair competition'.

[amateur51]

Struggling to get this thread back on-topic () - I'm thrilled to read confirmation of something I suspected might happen but felt that it was a vain hope ... Bob Diamond may cop it in the neck in the USA!

"US politicians are considering summoning Barclays' former boss Bob Diamond to Washington to answer questions about the Libor-fixing scandal, in a sign that the controversy is becoming an ever hotter issue in the US.

Two high powered committees, the Senate banking committee and the House financial services committee, are both believed to be considering calling Diamond to testify. Sources close to both committees said they were in the early stages of gathering information and were almost certain to call the former Barclays chief executive after the summer recess. "

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18806936

Oh what a beautiful morning ....

[eighthobstruction]

Oh joy !

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...perhaps he could take Gorgeous George [Galloway] with him for company he is good with American committees .... GG could tell them a thing or two about Greenspan and his 'puts' and Goldman Sachs and manipulation of the food markets for profit ....

they could read this on the plane

[handsomefortune]

greenspans' puts - yes what a fascinating topic calum da jazbo! not to mention greenspan's sentimental 'worship' of 'atlas shrugged' a separate community of 'destructives' ......rather than 'creatives', as originally promoted in ayn rand's book, allegedly stemming from 'subjectivism' (rather than 'objectivism') who'd have thought similar behavior would be known as the 'genetic' condition, ad&hd to today's generation. this subject is perhaps like untangling a knotty ball of wool.

#107 - this thread looks oddly familiar - it's beginning to look a bit like murdoch melt down posts - 'i like murdoch, there's nothing wrong with his tabloids, or 'the times, he can't help it if he's friends with the pm, they share the same taste in y fronts'',

followed by 'looks like the CIA are onto murdoch' then a mysterious silence from posters who posted they admired and 'like/d murdoch'. well, they can't like him that much then..... 'a friend in need' etc

anyway - go get him yankees (personally, i don't find i say that very often funnily nuff). tbf perhaps they need to get bob's equivalents too, at hsbc, lloyds etc?

anyway - do feel free to prove me wrong about the silence. perhaps a discussion on when is a crook a crook, and when is he a heroic, thrusting, expert business man although evidently it's a very fine line. discussion may be nigh on impossible....especially to those who know nowt about finance, other than till receipts at supermarkets, gas & electric and knitting. though i bet bob wishes he'd knitted more just lately!

[amateur51]

...perhaps he could take Gorgeous George [Galloway] with him for company he is good with American committees .... GG could tell them a thing or two about Greenspan and his 'puts' and Goldman Sachs and manipulation of the food markets for profit ....

they could read this on the plane

Excellent suggestion re GG, Calum

Watch Matt Taibbi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKLI2gqy-4g

[Lateralthinking1]

Why were del Missier and Ricci each given a remuneration package by Barclays of over £14m in 2010 when the remuneration package of Chief Executive Diamond was approximately £9m - and what might it tell us?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8367108/Jerry-del-Missier-is-highest-paid-employee-of-Barclays.html

[handsomefortune]

it tells us that 'the guardian''s recent article about 'how mervyn caught bob' might well have been bunkem?

[scottycelt]

Why were del Missier and Ricci each given a remuneration package by Barclays of over £14m in 2010 when the remuneration package of Chief Executive Diamond was approximately £9m - and what might it tell us?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...-Barclays.html

Excellent question!

It tells us that something distinctly odd is (has been) going on in many boardrooms (not just banks) in recent times and also the lack of transparency that surrounds it

Massive one-off payments to anonymous senior staff are often listed as 'extraordinary items' ... well we can't fault the accuracy of the term, I suppose.

Some years ago, I can well remember one instance when an 'extraordinary item' of £500,000 was listed in the small print of our company's annual report. When it was queried in the letters page of the in-house rag it transpired that it was a 'thank you gift' to our former unsuccessful MD of two-years standing who had suddenly gone on a six-month sabbatical (on full pay) to decide on the 'future direction of his career' and then had elected to quit altogether! The Chairman then announced that no further queries on the matter would be published in the newspaper.

Nice, eh ... ?

[handsomefortune]

'extraordinary items' presumably listed on committee agendas under 'any other business'!

Nice, eh ... ? otherwise known as thank you, good bye, and 'shu£ up', or 'zip it money' ...

when there's an awful lot to shut up about, presumably 'any other business' typically takes up most of all committee time in the world of finance. mervyn might mention this shortly, instead of pretending bob was a lone loony, a one off. or 'the fall guy' i think americans call it....though i'm sure we're more than familiar with that phrase here in the uk ...especially lately.

incidentally, recent pics of bob in the press look like they're straight out of a holywood movie to me. the new one they're blaming, in lat's link, (with bad skin) could do some promo work for clearasol, if he gets short of wonga.

the public will doubtless think 'oh he's clearly 'criminal - as he has spots'! perhaps mervyn will need a make over?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

spivs and chancers

mervyn needs examining about a sight more than libor and dermatology .... why is he giving zillions of £ to bankers who hoard it [and give it back] and aggravating the great depression ... why not give it to us and we will spend it and give jobs to people? ... now that would be a good Q for our merv

[ahinton]

OK, Barclays per se it ain't but, since the issues raised by certain of the now fairly well-known activities of Barclays are increasingly thought to have been replicated by other major banks and that the massive problems thereby cause are themselves only one part of an even wider and more endemic banking crisis, what are the views of members here about the (apparently now almost ratified) agreement that the c.40% publicly owned Lloyds TSB sells off more than 600 of its branches to the Co-op bank with the likely result that the latter will then own some 10% of the total of Britain's high street bank branches and some 7% of the funds of those retail banking operators' customers? Whatever else one might say or think about the Co-op bank, it does not, unlike the other "big banks", have shareholders to satisfy (or displease, as you will); to what extent (if any) that might mean more reliable amd less risky operation and better quality customer service it's probably too early to say, of course, but it might at first glance appear to be materially different to the kind of thing to which most retail bank customers (not already with Co-op bank) have long been assustomed.

[Serial_Apologist]

OK, Barclays per se it ain't but, since the issues raised by certain of the now fairly well-known activities of Barclays are increasingly thought to have been replicated by other major banks and that the massive problems thereby cause are themselves only one part of an even wider and more endemic banking crisis, what are the views of members here about the (apparently now almost ratified) agreement that the c.40% publicly owned Lloyds TSB sells off more than 600 of its branches to the Co-op bank with the likely result that the latter will then own some 10% of the total of Britain's high street bank branches and some 7% of the funds of those retail banking operators' customers? Whatever else one might say or think about the Co-op bank, it does not, unlike the other "big banks", have shareholders to satisfy (or displease, as you will); to what extent (if any) that might mean more reliable amd less risky operation and better quality customer service it's probably too early to say, of course, but it might at first glance appear to be materially different to the kind of thing to which most retail bank customers (not already with Co-op bank) have long been assustomed.

I had seriously contemplated transferring my billions to the Co-op after recent (still unresolved) trouble with online banking, but hadn't got around to checking on the proximity of branches. Were the Co-op to take over one or t'other of the Lloyds branches I now use, this would therefore resolve one problem. From this morning's Toady, we apparently learned that the Co-op would do very nicely out of it thank you, getting, not just the branches, but Lloyds staff, who nowadays have to carefully disguise their embarrassment (and of course it's not their fault), but would probably be much happier, though I don't have comparisons between the respective pay rates/grades.

[ahinton]

I had seriously contemplated transferring my billions to the Co-op

How unwise of you! Anyone with even one billion, let alone several, ought to know better than most that it is foolhardy to put all one's eggs in a single basket...

[Serial_Apologist]

How unwise of you! Anyone with even one billion, let alone several, ought to know better than most that it is foolhardy to put all one's eggs in a single basket...

My "other" billions are in other... baskets, ahinton.