Barclays Names C.E.O. Amid New Investigation

Barclays said on Thursday that it had appointed Antony Jenkins, an insider, to be its new chief executive, as the British bank seeks to move on from the interest-rate manipulation scandal that claimed its former head and a potentially damaging new investigation into the deal in which it raised capital to avoid a government bailout.

Mr. Jenkins, who heads the retail and business banking unit, is stepping into the top job immediately, the bank said. Barclays had been seeking a new chief since early June, when Mr. Jenkins' predecessor, Robert E. Diamond Jr., resigned abruptly.

Mr. Diamond's resignation came less than a week after the bank agreed to pay $450 million to settle accusations by U.S. and British authorities that it had sought to manipulate for its own benefit the London interbank overnight rate, an interest rate that serves as a benchmark for hundreds of billions of dollars of contracts and derivatives.

Barclays is the only bank so far to have ack nowledged complicity in the Libor manipulation, but the U.S. and British financial authorities are investigating other lenders in the case.

Mr. Diamond, an outspoken American investment banker who took over the top job at Barclays in September 2010, has been credited with helping to make Barclays into a major Wall Street player. But he became a symbol of executive excess in Britain, drawing a $10 million pay package last year at a time when the British government was cutting jobs and services in the name of austerity.

Even before the Libor scandal broke, Mr. Diamond had been booed and heckled by shareholders at the annual meeting in April, and more than a fourth of shareholders voted against awarding him the compensation package approved by Barclays' board.

In a statement, Mr. Jenkins acknowledged the challenges ahead, saying the bank had “made serious mistakes in recent years and clearly failed to keep pace with our stakeholders' expectations.”

H e added: “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 will be stepping directly into the hot seat. In addition to the Libor investigations, which could still yield criminal charges, and lawsuits connected with the case, Barclays said Wednesday said that the Serious Fraud Office, the British government agency that investigates and prosecutes white collar crime cases, “has commenced an investigation into payments under certain commercial agreements between Barclays and Qatar Holding LLC.”

The bank had already disclosed in its interim results last month that the Financial Services Authority, the British market watchdog, was investigating “Barclays and four current and former senior employees, including Chris Lucas, group finance director” regarding “the suf ficiency of disclosure in relation to fees payable under certain commercial agreements and whether these may have related to Barclays capital raisings in June and November 2008.”

Unlike its peers, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays managed to avoid a government bailout in the dark days of 2008, despite taking on the scorched American assets of Lehman Brothers.

When British regulators ordered London banks to raise capital. Barclays turned to sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi and Qatar. The bank raised a total of 4.5 billion pounds, or $7.1 billion, from Qatar in July and October 2008. Qatar Holdings is currently the largest shareholder in Barclays, with a 6.65 percent stake, according to Bloomberg data.

Barclays said last month that it “considers that it satisfied its disclosure obligations and confirms that it will cooperate fully with the FSA's investigation.”

Marcus Agius, the Barclays chairman, said in a stateme nt that Mr. Jenkins “stood out among a very competitive field of internal and external candidates,” and praised his role in developing the bank's strategy. Mr. Agius, who is also stepping down over the Libor scandal, is to be succeeded in November by David Walker.

The bank said Mr. Jenkins annual salary would be 1.1 million pounds, with an annual bonus of up to a maximum of 250 percent of his salary. He also stands to gain up to 400 percent of his annual salary under Barclays' long-term incentive program.

Mr. Jenkins started his finance career at Barclays in 1983, before moving to Citigroup in 1989, where he worked in both London and New York. He attended Oxford University, where he obtained a master's degree in philosophy, politics and economics. He also has an M.B.A. from the Cranfield Institute of Technology.

Shares of Barclays fell 0.9 percent in London morning trading.