Tinney in the tribunal – troubling issues

Though the Upper Tribunal overturned a prohibition order against the former chief operating officer of Barclays Wealth for allegedly suppressing a damning report about his business unit, he has nonetheless received a formal censure. Yet the case prompts disquiet about why Andrew Tinney – who acted under senior instruction – was the only figure held responsible, as well as the relationship between internal inquiries and regulatory supervision, comments Adam Samuel.

Adam SamuelBA LLM DipPFS MCISI FCIArb Certs CII (MP&ER) Barrister and Attorney may be contacted atadamsamuel@aol.com.For links to where you can buy the second edition of ‘Consumer Financial Services Complaints and Compensation’, see www.adamsamuel.com/book.

The Upper Tribunal’s decision in the Tinney case leaves the reader with a profound sense of unease about notions of truth, integrity and individual responsibility in the ethical cesspool that modern banking occupies all too frequently. The tribunal upheld the Financial Conduct Authority’s decision formally to censure the former chief operating officer of Barclays Wealth for dissimulating the fact that a written report on the lamentable state of his organisation’s business culture had been received when helping his CEO to reply to the group chairman on the subject. The tribunal disagreed with the FCA Regulatory Decisions Committee that he had done broadly the same thing to the global head of regulatory relations in response to a request from the Federal Reserve, Barclays Wealth’s United States regulator.