Qatari connection casts long shadow over Barclays

Qatari connection casts long shadow over Barclays:

"On a balmy evening in 2007, the Tunisian wife of an Italian industrialist introduced a high-flying Scottish banker at Barclays to the Anglophile prime minister of Qatar — the sort of nexus of celebrity, power and money that takes places every summer on Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda. This encounter proved more important than most. Just over a year later, as the worst financial crisis in a generation created havoc across the industry, Barclays was suddenly under threat and in desperate need of outside funding. Roger Jenkins, then head of Barclays’ principal investing group, would be the one to secure it. Over the course of 2008 he masterminded two deals with a man he met in Sardinia the previous summer: Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, at the time Qatar’s prime minister and chair of the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Known as HBJ, he would help pump a total of £6.1bn into the bank. The goal was to save it from government ownership, even as its rivals Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group were bailed out."



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