We know that Barclays chief executive Jes Staley committed a “serious offence” when he tried to unmask a whistleblower, and that the poor thing will now have to get by on just his basic salary of nearly £10,000 a day when his bonus is slashed as punishment. What we don’t know is if the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority will go further once their investigations are concluded.

The regulators’ ultimate weapon is declaring an individual not fit and proper to be a director of the bank and therefore forcing Staley’s dismissal, although Barclays’ share price (which had risen slightly by the close of trading) tells you the market thinks that outcome highly unlikely.

Staley’s defence appears to be that the whistleblower was making a malicious personal attack on a colleague, rather than anything substantive about the bank’s operations. It’s difficult to argue that personal issues, whatever they were, really threaten a financial institution.

What Staley is probably guilty of is behaving like a bit of a chump. A streak of hot-headedness surfaces in this story, which the experts and advisers appear to have failed to restrain. Has Staley created a culture in which his word is not to be questioned? Or is there another interpretation – that this is the story of a boss who is intensely loyal to his staff? Maybe, although that’s no defence from breaching fairly transparent rules surrounding whistleblowing.

This melodrama is worthy of a Mexican daytime soap, not the head of one of Britain’s biggest banks. The next episode airs on 10 May, when Staley must face shareholders at the bank’s annual general meeting. Staley will likely ride that one out, but when the FCA/PRA final report emerges, the resolution of his future could be a cliffhanger. Patrick Collinson

High street retailers face bumpy road ahead

Retailers have had a rotten start to 2017. After unexpectedly perky trading conditions late last year, life has got a lot tougher.

The latest snapshot of the sector from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG found that sales were lower in March than they were a year earlier, the first decline since the choppy post-Brexit vote environment last August.

To be sure, the timing of Easter played a part. Consumers tend to increase their spending over the long bank holiday weekend, and retailers will be expecting the sort of bounce over the coming days that they got in March last year.

But it is not just Easter. Three other factors also appear to be playing a part. Firstly, consumers brought forward spending into late 2016 because they anticipated that prices would go up this year as a result of the rising inflation caused by the depreciation of sterling.

That fear proved to be well-founded. The annual inflation rate has been rising since the middle of last year and prices are now rising as fast as wages.

Secondly, it is now costing consumers more to fill their cars with fuel and to heat their homes. They have less left over to spare on little treats than they did this time last year. Impulse buying has been replaced by a more cautious approach.

Finally, consumers appear to have decided that they would rather cut back on spending in the high street than on eating out. Bars and restaurants are doing better than shops.

It’s hard to see life getting easier for retailers any time soon. The apprenticeship levy and the higher national minimum wage are adding to their costs at a time when consumers are highly sensitive to prices rises. There will be winners – Aldi and Lidl spring to mind – but plenty of losers. Larry Elliott

Rail boss pay reward doesn’t seem fare

It has become standard practice for large companies to build ever closer links between pay and performance in recent years, the theory being that there should be no rewards for failure. Variable pay ought to be all the more important in businesses whose failings end up hurting ordinary people. That’s why the half a million pound pay packet for Southern Rail boss Charles Horton will raise hackles among passengers.

Many have found themselves missing out on jobs or getting home too late to read their children a bedtime story due to repeated delays and cancellations on the stricken network. If they are suffering, why shouldn’t executives suffer with them? Of course, there is more to this than Southern’s management of the franchise.

An acrimonious and complex labour dispute over driver-only trains has weighed heavily on Southern. But many passengers will feel that the buck must stop with the company accepting their money. Rob Davies

Philip Hammond has signalled that the government is facing a multibillion-pound loss from selling off its 73% stake in Royal Bank of Scotland.

The chancellor told MPs that that “we have to live in the real world”, as he indicated that the remaining shares could be sold below the 502p average price that was paid for them during 2008 and 2009 when £45bn of taxpayers’ money was pumped into the Edinburgh-based bank.

Shares in the bank – which has reported nine consecutive annual losses since its rescue by the taxpayer – are trading at about 224p. This is the first time Hammond has acknowledged that the shares are likely to be sold at a loss to the taxpayer, although Hammond’s predecessor George Osborne sold off a 5% stake in 2015 at 330p a share – a £1bn loss.

Hammond said: “The government is not at present actively marketing its stake in RBS. Our policy remains to return the bank to private hands as soon as we can achieve fair value for the shares, recognising that fair value could well be below what the previous government paid for them.

“We have to live in the real world and make decisions on the future of our holding in RBS in the best interests of taxpayers.”

He has previously described the stake as a long-term asset and any further sell-off as being hindered by the uncertainty surrounding selling off 300 branches as mandated by the EU and a fine by the US for mortgage bond mis-selling in the run-up to the financial crisis.

In contrast, the government has reduced its stake in Lloyds Banking Group from 43%, when it invested to prop up the company during the financial crisis, to less than 2% and has sold off £12bn of Bradford & Bingley mortgages.

A US banker has been ordered to pay his ex-wife half of the family’s £140m fortune, after the court of appeal rejected his claim that his “genius” outshone her contribution to the marriage.

Randy Work, 49, a former executive at Texas-based private equity firm Lone Star, had first claimed that his wife of 20 years, Mandy Gray, was entitled to only £5m because she had “unfortunately” failed to stick to the terms of their prenuptial agreement and had had an affair with the couple’s personal physiotherapist.

A high court judge rejected Work’s claim that he made an “exceptional contribution” to the marriage and was therefore entitled to more than a 50-50 split of the couple’s assets, which include a £30m mansion in Kensington, west London, complete with swimming pool and fitness centre and an £18m ski lodge in Aspen, Colorado.

Ruling on their divorce in 2015 Justice Holman told the businessman that his wealth contribution – which Work said totalled more than $300m in 10 years – was not “wholly exceptional” and rejected his claim to be a financial “genius”.

“I personally find that a difficult, and perhaps unhelpful, word in this context,” Holman said. “To my mind, the word ‘genius’ tends to be overused and is properly reserved for Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Einstein and others like them.”

Work, who has spent at least £3m fighting to keep his wife from collecting half of the family fortune, took the case to the court of appeal which on Tuesday unanimously rejected his appeal against Holman’s ruling. “In our view the husband has failed to demonstrate that Holman J’s decision was wrong,” three court of appeal judges said.

London has become known as the divorce capital of the world because British judges tend not to discriminate between breadwinner and homemaker and order equal splits of combined fortunes. However, Work had hoped to convince the court of appeal judges to allow him to join those few men who had been granted more than half of the combined assets in a divorce in recognition of the “wholly exceptional nature” of their success.

Sir Martin Sorrell, founder of advertising firm WPP, was awarded 60% of joint assets in his 2005 divorce from Sandra, his wife of 33 years. In 2014, a judge granted the ex-wife of Chris Hohn, the billionaire founder of hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund, 36% of their $1.5bn fortune.

Holman had ruled that although Work was an “astute businessman”, Gray was a “highly intelligent” woman who had given up her career to follow her husband to Tokyo, where he made hundreds of millions of pounds exploiting the Japanese financial crisis.

“A successful claim to a special contribution requires some exceptional and individual quality in the spouse concerned. Being in the right place at the right time or benefiting from a period of boom is not enough,” Holman said.

“It may one day fall for consideration whether a very highly paid footballer, who is very good at his job but may be no more skilful than past greats, such as Stanley Matthews or Bobby Charlton, makes a special contribution or is merely the lucky beneficiary of the colossal payments now made possible by the sale of television rights.”

Mandy Gray, who split up with Work in 2013. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Holman said Work and Gray, 47, had been “two strong and equal partners” and he would not have been able to amass his vast fortune without her contribution.

The pair, who are both American and have two teenage children, met in 1992 and married in 1995. They split up in 2013 when Gray began an affair with the couple’s physiotherapist, 44, who she now lives with in a rented flat in Kensington.

During the divorce hearing Holman had said the case “should be so easy” to settle as there was “plenty of money to go round” and criticised the couple for descending into “unedifying and destructive pugilism”.

I’m writing about a ludicrous issue I’ve had with The Co-operative Bank. I tried to transfer £150 to my father by phone, which I needed to do before the weekend. It proceeded to ask an array of security questions, which I answered, and kept me on hold for an hour before telling me that I wasn’t 15 (I most definitely am) due to my “deep voice”.

When my dad asked what was going on, it refused him access to a manager, and the staff member wouldn’t even give his name. Because of the branches being closed all weekend I have essentially been refused access to my money. The bank offered me a derisory £25 as a goodwill payment but I think their behaviour amounts to discrimination.

​BS (age 15), Cottingham, near Hull

We can understand your frustration – particularly given how you appear to be handling your finances independently – but (dare we say) we think perhaps you have been over sensitive about the security questions. Clearly it is difficult to determine someone’s age given voice changes around puberty. We contacted the Co-operative Bank which double-checked its records and said that on the call you correctly answered the normal security questions followed by some additional ones. The adviser said you appeared to sound a little older than your age and the call was transferred to somebody else. They went on to ask the same questions again, only to refer you to your branch.

The Co-op said it had investigated your complaint and put your findings in writing. It stressed the importance of speaking to the correct customer, which involves a clear “process” if there are any concerns. However, as it believes this has let you down, and as it has meant extra trips to withdraw funds from the cash machine and delayed your purchase, it has agreed to uphold your complaint. The Co-op has given feedback to the relevant team and is considering reviewing it and looking at alternatives. It has also arranged for £50 to be paid into your account as a way of saying sorry. You balked at this offer too, but we think you should accept it.

We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number

Wells Fargo has clawed back $75m from two former top executives after an internal report concluded management had little interest in dealing with an overly aggressive sales culture that dated back at least 15 years until that culture spiraled out of control, resulting in millions of accounts being opened fraudulently.

The bank’s board clawed $75m in pay from former CEO John Stumpf and community bank executive Carrie Tolstedt, saying both dragged their feet for years regarding problems at the second-largest US bank. Both were ultimately unwilling to accept criticism that the bank’s sales-focused business model was failing.

The 110-page report has been in the works since September, when Wells acknowledged that its employees opened up to 2m checking and credit card accounts without customers’ authorization. Trying to meet unrealistic sales goals, Wells employees even created phony email addresses to sign customers up for online banking services.

“(Wells’ management) created pressure on employees to sell unwanted or unneeded products to customers and, in some cases, to open unauthorized accounts,” the board said in its report.

Many current and former employees have talked of intense and constant pressure from managers to sell and open accounts, and some said it pushed them into unethical behavior. The report backs up those employees’ accounts.

“It was common to blame employees who violated Wells Fargo’s rules without analyzing what caused or motivated them to do so ... (or determine) whether there were responsible individuals, who while they might have no directed the specific misconduct, contributed to the environment (that caused it),” the board said.

The report also says that problems in the bank’s sales culture date back to at least 2002 – far earlier than what the bank had previously said – and that Stumpf knew about sales problems at a branch in Colorado since at least that year.

The bank has already paid $185m in fines to federal and local authorities and settled a $110m class-action lawsuit. The scandal also resulted in the abrupt retirement last October of longtime CEO John Stumpf, not long after he underwent blistering questioning from congressional panels. The bank remains under investigation in several states, as well as by the Securities and Exchange Commission, for its practices.

The board’s report recommended that Stumpf and Tolstedt have additional compensation clawed back for their negligence and poor management. Tolstedt will lose $47.3m in stock options, on top of $19m the board had already clawed back. Stumpf will lose an additional $28m in compensation, on top of the $41m the board already clawed back. Along with the millions clawed back from other executives earlier this year, the roughly $180m in clawbacks are among the largest in US corporate history.

The board found that, when presented with the growing problems in Wells’ community banking division, senior management was unwilling to hear criticism or consider changes in behavior. The board particularly faulted Tolstedt, calling her “insular and defensive” and unable to accept scrutiny from inside or outside her organization.

The board also found that Tolstedt actively worked to play down any problems in her division. In a report made in October 2015, nearly three years after a Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered the scandal, Tolstedt “minimized and understated problems at the community bank”.

Tolstedt declined to be interviewed for the investigation, the board said, on advice from her lawyers.

Stumpf also received his share of criticism. In its report, the board found that Stumpf was also unwilling to change Wells’ business model when problems arose.

“His reaction invariably was that a few bad employees were causing issues ... he was too late and too slow to call for inspection or critical challenge to (Wells’) basic business model,” the board said.

Stumpf, however, did not seem to express regret for how he handled those initial weeks after the bank was fined, including when he initially levied most of the blame on low-level employees for the sales practices problems instead of management, said Stuart Baskin, lawyer with Shearman & Sterling, the firm that the board hired to investigate the sales scandal.

The investigation found that Wells’ corporate structure was also to blame. Under Stumpf, Wells operated in a decentralized fashion, with executives of each of the businesses running their divisions almost like separate companies.

While there is nothing wrong with operating a large company such as Wells in a decentralized fashion, the board said, the structure backfired in this case by allowing Tolstedt and other executives to hide the problems in their organization from senior management and the board of directors.

When the scandal broke, Wells said it had fired roughly 5,300 employees as a result of the sales practices, the vast majority of them rank-and-file employees. But when that figure was announced, it was the first time that the board of directors had heard the sales practices problems were of such a large size and scope. According to the report, as recently as May 2015, senior management told the board that only 230 employees had been fired for sales practices violations.

Wells has instituted several corporate and business changes since the problems became known nationwide. Wells has changed its sales practices and called tens of millions of customers to check on whether they truly opened the accounts in question.

The Bank of England has found itself under the spotlight again over the fixing of a key interest rate during the credit crunch after new details emerged of bankers discussing Threadneedle Street’s alleged involvement in the setting of Libor.

BBC1’s Panorama programme said it had obtained a recording of a 2008 call between two bankers at Barclays in which the more senior person said the government and Bank of England were exerting pressure on it to lower the rate it offered for Libor – the London interbank offered rate, which is the interest rate banks charge each other for short-term loans.

Libor is used as a reference point around the world for loans and mortgages and is set each day by a panel of leading banks, with each one submitting the rates at which it is willing to borrow.

Revelations that the rate was rigged at the height of the financial crisis have led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds from a variety of regulators, while bankers from Barclays and UBS have been jailed.

The BBC said its investigations added to evidence the Bank of England had pressured commercial banks to push their Libor rates down and that the transcript of the phone conversation at Barclays called into question evidence to the Treasury select committee in 2012 by the former Barclays boss Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker, former deputy governor of the Bank of England.

Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, called for a new investigation on the back of the broadcaster’s report.

“This is an extremely serious revelation that contradicts past assurances about the role of the Bank of England in the Libor scandal,” he said.

“It goes to the very heart of whether our financial institutions can be trusted. Therefore, it warrants an immediate high-level investigation, and the chancellor must act straight away to ensure this happens.”

The BBC said that in the recording, a senior Barclays manager, Mark Dearlove, is heard instructing a Libor submitter, Peter Johnson, to lower his rates.

“The bottom line is you’re going to absolutely hate this ... but we’ve had some very serious pressure from the UK government and the Bank of England about pushing our Libors lower,” Dearlove told Johnson, according to the BBC.

Johnson, a 35-year Barclays veteran, pleaded guilty in October 2014 and was sentenced to four years in prison for conspiring to fraudulently rig global benchmark interest rates.

The October 2008 conversation between Dearlove and Johnson was first reported in the recently published book on Libor rigging, The Fix, by Gavin Finch and Liam Vaughan.

For the Bank of England, the recording returns unwelcome attention to its role during the Libor scandal after it was forced to deal with allegations about pressure on commercial banks during parliamentary hearings almost five years ago.

In 2012, the former senior Barclays executive Jerry del Missier justified his decision to order his staff to manipulate interest rates in 2008 by saying he believed he was acting on the instruction of the central bank.

Del Missier told MPs on the Treasury select committee that he had issued the instruction after a conversation with his then boss, Diamond, in October 2008, when the financial system was on the brink. Diamond was then running Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm, before being promoted to chief executive.

Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays in the wake of the £290m fine received by the bank for attempting to manipulate Libor.

Tucker was also called before the committee to explain his dealings with Diamond. The MPs largely exonerated Tucker, but the release of a series of emails, including one in which he referred to Diamond as “an absolute brick”, raised questions about his cosy relationship with the City.

One member of the current Treasury committee, the Conservative MP Chris Philp, said he had seen the BBC’s “explosive” evidence. “Urgent enquiry needed,” Philp added on Twitter.

Chris Philp MP (@chrisphilp_mp)

I have seen Panorama's explosive evidence on LIBOR rigging. Suggests in 2008/9 Bank of England instructed rigging. Urgent enquiry needed

April 10, 2017

The Bank of England said it had provided a statement to the BBC noting that Libor and other global benchmarks were not regulated in the UK or elsewhere at the time. The Bank added it was helping with investigations by the Serious Fraud Office into Libor manipulation by employees at commercial banks and brokers.

“The Bank is committed to publishing materials relating to the SFO’s investigations into benchmark manipulation when it is appropriate to do so. Until the SFO’s ongoing prosecutorial activity relating to Libor and other benchmarks has concluded, the Bank is not in a position to publish these materials,” the statement said.

The Treasury also sought to provide reassurances that standards had improved since the Libor scandal.

“The government is absolutely clear that we must learn from the lessons of the past,” said a Treasury spokesman.

“That is why, since the financial crisis, we have carried out wholesale reform of how the financial system is regulated in this country, including making the manipulation of Libor a criminal offence.”

A spokesman for Diamond declined to comment. Barclays also declined to comment on behalf of the bank itself or on behalf of Dearlove.

Tucker had not responded to a Guardian request for comment at the time of publication.

Credit Suisse bosses have cut their bonuses by 40% in the hope of avoiding an embarrassing protest by shareholders and politicians at the bank’s annual meeting.

The bank’s executives, led by chief executive Tidjane Thiam, had proposed paying themselves bonuses totalling 78m Swiss francs (£62m) even though the Swiss bank lost SFr2.7bn last year and has been fined $5.3bn (£4.2bn) by the US authorities for its role in the subprime mortgage crisis.

Institutional investors and Swiss politicians had publicly criticised the bumper payouts – including a total of SFr12m for Thiam - and vowed to vote against the awards at the bank’s AGM later this month.

The bank, which had defended the planned bonuses as recently as Thursday, announced it was reducing the awards early on Friday morning. “I hope that this decision will alleviate some of the concerns expressed by some shareholders and will allow the executive team to continue to focus on the task at hand,” Thiam said in a letter to investors published on the bank’s website. “My highest priority is to see through the turnaround of Credit Suisse which is under way.”

Tidjane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse. Photograph: Ennio Leanza/AP

Thiam conceded that the “financial impact” of the toxic mortgage settlement with the US Department of Justice was “not appropriately reflected in the compensation of current management”.

Thiam told Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft last month that “making today’s management pay for [the mis-selling of toxic mortgage securities] wouldn’t be a good incentive”.

Three shareholder advisory services, including the influential Institutional Shareholder Service (ISS), had urged shareholders to vote down the pay awards. “Despite a second consecutive net loss, variable remuneration levels for the executive board remained high, including a SFr4.17m short-term incentive for the CEO,” said ISS, which advises more than 1,700 of the world’s biggest investors.

Shareholder votes on executive pay are binding in Switzerland. If Credit Suisse had lost the vote, it would have been the first major veto since the so-called “fat cat law” came into force four years ago and would serve as a major embarrassment for the bank.

Thomas Minder, a Swiss politician who has led a revolt against excessive executive pay in the country, said the scale of proposed bonuses being offered by a loss-making company were a “mortal sin”.

“If corporate governance is correct and the company has worked well and has a good annual result, then yes, some of [the profits] should be distributed,” said Minder, who led a 2013 referendum resulting in the implementation of the binding shareholder vote on executive pay. “But if it worked badly, like Credit Suisse, then, dear me, nothing can be allowed to be paid out.”

Minder told Reuters: “If there’s no money in the coffers, then there are no bonuses for top management or employees. That is a mortal sin.”

Thomas Minder. Photograph: Ruben Sprich/Reuters

Thiam, who was previously boss of insurance giant Prudential, said: “Our decision [to cut the bonus pool] reflects the total confidence we have in the progress we are making. Although that progress is not yet reflected in our share price, I am confident that our strategy and our disciplined execution will in due course create value for you, our shareholders.”

Credit Suisse’s shares have lost more than 11% of their value over the past year.

Excessive boardroom pay has moved up the British political agenda since the financial crisis of 2008. Last year, the prime minister, Theresa May, stated an ambition to crack down on poor corporate governance in the UK.

May had called for annual binding shareholder votes on executive pay to end the “irrational, unhealthy and growing gap between what these companies pay their workers and what they pay their bosses” and to help “make our economy work for everyone”.

However, a government green paper on corporate governance reform published in November backed away from a binding shareholder vote at AGMs.