Barclays announced that finance director Chris Lucas and the company’s top legal expert are retiring, according to Reuters. Lucas has been the finance director for six years. He is one of four former and current employees under investigation by authorities in the United Kingdom because of a capital injection by Qatar in 2008.
The legal expert, Group General Counsel Mark Harding, is also retiring. Both executives will stay in their jobs until the company finds successors and the handover has been finished. Barclays noted that headhunters were appointed for the search, but that the process is going to take “a considerable time.”
Lucas is the only executive director still at Barclays following the bank being fined by $450 million back in June for rigging the Libor global benchmark interest rate. Antony Jenkins, the company’s new chief executive, is trying to advance the company away from the issues it has seen over the past couple of years.
He said that Lucas and Harding informed him late in 2012 that they were thinking about retiring. “Their decision to retire was theirs alone,” he said. One source close to the situation said that Lucas has been suffering from health problems, which have not affected his job, but have influenced his retirement decision.
“Now is the appropriate time … to begin my retirement from my role on the board and executive committee, and to pass the mantle on to a successor,” Lucas said in a statement.
“The execution of our change programme will take place over the next 5-10 years, and both Chris and Mark feel that now is the right time for them, personally and professionally, to pass the baton on in their respective roles to executives who can commit to seeing that programme to completion,” Jenkins said.
Harding has been with the company since 2003 as general counsel. He was responsible for legal issues throughout the company and handled the bank’s settlement with United States authorities and British authorities in 2012 for manipulating the Libor rates. Harding worked as general counsel at UBS’s investment bank prior to Barclays. He was also a partner with the law firm Clifford Chance
In 2012, the former employees who left the company due to the Libor scandal include the following: Former Chief Executive Bob Diamond, Chairman Marcus Agius and Chief Operating Officer Jerry del Missier.
Lucas joined the board at Barclays from PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2007. He was paid close to four million pounds in 2010 and 2011 as his compensation.