Barclays Names New CEO

British banking giant Barclays

has named Antony Jenkins, previously the head of the retail and business banking unit, its new Chief Executive Officer. Jenkins took the job with immediate effect, and he will have to hit the ground running because Barclays has been under a negative spotlight for quite some time now. The day before Jenkins took the job, the bank admitted that it is the subject of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office regarding payments between Barclays and Qatar Holding. On July 27,

Barclays had set aside millions of pounds to cover bad decisions made selling financial products. Chairman Marcus Agius resigned his position on July 2, saying that, "the buck stops with me." Barclays had been fined $453 million for rate fixing after emails were made public, showing very clearly that the Barclays staff knew they were doing wrong. The bank was fined for manipulating the LIBOR between 2005 and 2009. The AP says that the LIBOR, "is calculated daily by the British Bankers' Association, based on lending rate figures submitted by global banks." However, some members of Barclays' staff adjusted those figures to boost profits. Former CEO Bob Diamond followed Agius out of the door on the same day, later facing a parliamentary inquiry in which he was accused of misleading. Diamond told the committee, "A number of banks were posting rates that were significantly below ours that we didn't think were correct. I can't sit here and say no one in the industry didn't know about the problems with Libor. There was an issue out there and it should have been dealt with more broadly.” Committee Chairman Andrew Tyrie commented on inconsistencies between Diamond's statements and the written evidence that it holds. "It will look to us, and frankly it will look to everybody listening, like another example of a complete lack of candor to parliament by the Chief Executive of Barclays," Tyrie said. Diamond, writing to Tyrie, stated, "Having watched the committee's session today, I was dismayed that you and some of your fellow committee members appear to have suggested that I was less than candid with the committee last week. The comments made at today's hearing have had a terribly unfair impact on my reputation, which is of paramount concern to me." This is what Jenkins has to step into – the head job at a company that seriously needs to be stabilized. “We have an obligation to all of those stakeholders — customers, clients, shareholders, colleagues and broader society — and a unique opportunity to restore Barclays' reputation by making it the ‘go to' bank in all of our chosen markets,” he said. Investors surely hope that he takes those obligations seriously going forward. On Thursday morning, Barclays traded at about $11.75, down roughly 1.1 percent