Betting on bankers
THERE is a new fashion in bank chair- men: bankers. I rather like it. First the Midland, after 60 years of assorted gran- dees, takes a banker from across the road. Now Barclays picks John Quinton, a career banker there, since he came down from Cambridge, and the first chairman from outside the founding families. Barclays has always been different. Its High Street rivals (the TSB now excepted) are the joint-stock banks which sprang up in the 19th century when the Bank of England's monopoly was eroded, outgrew the private banks, and picked them off. Barclays descends from some 20 private banks which, rather than waiting to be taken over, joined up. Names like Buxton, Tritton, Bevan, Pease and (naturally) Barclay signal that the banking families are still there. Local connections and the habit of local decision-making persisted when other banks were referring everything to head office. The families and the connections' families (for instance, from Barclays' University customers in Oxford) gave Barclays a directorial cadre when others for long had none. The chairman, Sir Timothy Bevan, rails against the 'grey anonymity' of the High Street banks — a danger, and, for the different, an opportunity. Will Barclays be less diffe- rent under John Quinton? I think not. It was he who threw Barclays' doors open on Saturdays — though some credit must go to the Prime Minister. Never a bankers' groupie, she would greet their protesta- tions of virtue with 'Call yourselves com- petitive? Why don't you open on Satur- days?' I believe that the time came when she tried that rhetorical question on Mr Quinton and got an unexpected answer. How far, now, will the new fashion in chairmen spread? Lord Boardman, from business and politics, proved just the chair- man National Westminster needed when Robin Leigh-Pemberton unexpectedly made way for an older man, and remains in cracking form, which is just as well, be- cause there is no obvious successor on his board. In Lord Barber, Standard Char- tered has an invisible chairman, with a formidable banker, Peter Graham, as his 20/20 visible deputy.
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