Banks hold deposits and savings entrusted to them by individuals, by businesses, by governments and by central banks. They put that money to work, helping people to buy homes, for example, or lending to businesses to invest in expansion.
Soon after the financial crisis of 2008, I was at a meeting in Washington with a group of U.S. senators. They had invited me to provide a point of view on new regulation; regulation aimed at ensuring we never have to go through the events of 2008 ever again.
In our equities business, 49 of the 50 most important Lehman clients are back doing business with us. The flows are 75 to 80 per cent of what they were prior to the bankruptcy. The issues which damaged Lehman were around commercial mortgages and illiquid private equity assets.
My obligation is to the owners of Barclays, my shareholders. They hired me. People who criticise compensation for individuals in isolation at, say, BarCap, individuals who don't work in the U.K. and are competing with U.S., German or Asian banks, they should look at all these factors.
If someone can't behave with their colleagues and can't be part of the culture, it doesn't matter how good they are at what they do; they have to be asked to leave.
When the U.K. or U.S. government issues bonds to fund a deficit, the buyers are not solely in the U.K. or the U.S. - they're in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Investment banks provide direct access to these buyers.
You shouldn't be trying to create a system where no bank fails, but you should be creating one that catches a bank and allows it to fail without impacting the financial markets.
