Barclays has reiterated its commitment to changing the culture, responding to a newspaper report saying that a former chief operating officer at the UK-listed bank’s wealth arm had quit after revealing he secretly destroyed a damaging report about the lender.

The UK’s Mail on Sunday newspaper said Andrew Tinney destroyed an “explosive dossier” after reading its contents. “He then misled banking regulators and Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins – the man brought in to clean up the bank after the Libor rate-fixing scandal and the resignation of Bob Diamond – by pretending that the report had never existed. But he finally owned up to suppressing it, and last week Barclays made an internal announcement that he had resigned from his job,” the newspaper reported.

The report claimed that the document, which the MoS had seen, “exposes a culture of fear, intimidation, bullying and mismanagement at the bank’s stockbroking and investment arm, which handles client assets worth £184 billion.”

Last year, Barclays incurred penalties from US and UK authorities totaling £290 million (around $455 million) for misconduct relating to the inter-bank interest rate market. UBS, Switzerland’s largest firm, has followed suit with a fine totaling $1.53 billion for similar offences. These and other transgressions by large banks – such as over breaches of anti-money laundering rules – have continued to keep a sharp focus on the internal controls, or lack thereof, in such firms.

Reponse

Responding to the report, Barclays said in a statement: "Antony Jenkins acknowledged clearly last week in a letter to all 140,000 colleagues in Barclays that transformation of the bank's culture is imperative if Barclays is to achieve its objective of becoming the 'go-to' bank, and he laid out a strong plan for effecting that change.”

“Independent reports, like the one commissioned in early 2012 for Barclays Wealth in America, are intended to identify areas where change is required and to recommend remedial steps. These types of exercise never result in comfortable reading, but we have been, and will, remain absolutely committed to taking the necessary steps to address the issues raised,” the statement said.

The newspaper said the report, which it said Tinney destroyed, “paints a devastating picture of incompetence and arrogance at the bank, showing that executives pursued a ‘revenue at all costs’ strategy; fostered a culture of fear and intimidation; were ‘actively hostile’ to the idea of compliance with banking rules, presided over a ‘broken culture’ where problems were ignored or buried, and allowed the business to spin ‘out of control’.”