Thursday 13 September 2018 1:09 pm

Former Barclays boss Bob Diamond claims banks are too risk-averse since financial crash

The former boss of Barclays, Bob Diamond, has said that banks are too risk averse in today's post-financial crash environment.

Diamond, who was once described as the "unacceptable face of banking" by Labour minister Peter Mandelson, took a different tone ahead of the 10-year anniversary of the Lehmans Brothers collapse on Saturday.

"The culture of banking now is that if anyone makes a mistake they get fined — or the bank is in trouble," he told the BBC. "If they are totally without risk, they are not helping create jobs and economic growth."

Diamond was head of Barclays' Capital arm in 2008, before he climbed to the position of chief exec in 2011. He left the bank in 2012 during the Libor rigging scandal and now works with Atlas Mara, a financial services company which he co-founded in 2013.

The former Barclays boss also defended his part in the financial crash and the labels slapped on banks.

"Labels like casino banking are very pejorative and very unhelpful and don't describe the reality," he said. "Vince Cable was wrong." The Lib Dem politician famously used the description during his time as business secretary in 2010.

"We have asset managers managing pension funds who need access to liquidity," he argued. "We have companies hedging their foreign exchange exposure. Sit on a trading floor and you'll see the real value this brings to the economy."

He also claimed that despite the rigging scandal, Barclays had a positive culture during his time there.

"I don't think the reprehensible behaviour of a few people out of 160,000 employees is representative of the culture we had at Barclays – I think we had a very strong culture," he said.