Barclays Capital

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Barclays Capital is the investment banking division of Barclays Bank.

PR and Lobbying

Barclays Capital's external lobbying firm in 2011-2012 is Cicero Consulting. [1]

PR lobbying firm Finsbury listed Barclays Capital as a client in 2009.

"Dividend washing" aka tax avoidance planning

In December 2011 an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism uncovered a £65.7bn market in European equity dividends whose "central" purpose is tax avoidance. The bureau revealed how some of London's biggest banks 'are behind a huge tax avoidance trade "cheating" European countries of hundreds of millions of euros a year' in taxes. Its analysis suggests that the loss – mainly to France, Germany and Italy – is up to £500m a year. The banks include Credit Suisse, Barclays Capital, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

Against the backdrop of Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to wield Britain's EU veto to protect the Square Mile, former Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott called for the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the Treasury and the European Commission 'to launch an investigation to ensure full disclosure of all dividend arbitrage transactions'.

"The FSA, Treasury and the European commission must work closely together to ensure the whole sequence of transactions of this type is fully disclosed to the British, German and French tax authorities. We must stamp out abusive artificial tax-dodging transactions together with our European partners, and stop pretending they are out to undermine the City of London as a responsible and pre-eminent financial centre." [2]

People

Revolving door

  • Lord Digby Jones - former Minister for UK Trade and Investment from 2007-08, was also a senior advisor to Barclays Capital from 2006-078 [3]
  • Ivan Rogers - former Barclays Capital Head of the Public Sector Industry Group, UK and Ireland from 2010-2011, now the UK Prime Minister's Adviser on Europe and Global Issues and Head of European and Global Issues Secretariat since October 2011

Contacts

Website:http://www.barcap.com

London Offices: 5 The North Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4BB
Condor House, St Pauls Churchyard, London, EC4M 8AL

References

  1. APPC Register Entry for 1 Jun 2011 to 31 Aug 2011, Fee-Paying clients for whom UK PA consultancy services provided this quarter
  2. Nick Mathiason, Tax avoidance trade puts Square Mile in spotlight again, The Observer, Sunday 18 December 2011
  3. About Lord Jones