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> In October 2008, Barclays was saved from collapse thanks to a $12 billion investment led by Qatar’s government. As part of the transaction, Barclays paid Qatar a secret $452 million fee for “advisory services” and loaned the country an additional $3 billion. To the SFO, the fee looked like a bribe and the loan an attempt by Barclays to illegally fund a purchase of its own shares. (The executives and the bank deny wrongdoing.) Preventing stuff like this is essential to a working stock market. How can anyone invest in any company, if he has to fear that the companies assets he supposedly owns a share of, are given away in exchange for buying stock, so that the managers can get a bonus for the rising stock price, instead of the company getting raided and the managers replaced with better ones? There's no detail about the other cases, but at least in this case it's clear that there's no dichotomy at all between the UK's economic interest, jobs, the free market and ethics, but rather between those things and the upper management of a single company. > Bankers who manipulate markets ought to be charged, he said, but “simply ratcheting up ever-larger fines that just penalize shareholders, erode capital reserves, and diminish the lending potential of the economy is not, in the end, a long-term answer.” "penalize shareholders" Shareholders are supposed to invest in sound businesses. There's nothing wrong with them being "penalized" by fines, anymore then there's anything wrong with them being "penalized" if a companies new product fails. |