Shareholder group ISS backs Barclays board over former CEO Staley

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has recommended Barclays investors re-elect all board members at next month’s annual meeting, sapping the momentum of protests against bosses for supporting former CEO Jes Staley who is being investigated over his links with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The influential proxy advisor said in a report published on Monday that “questions may be posed” as to the board’s judgment in its decision to back Staley between 2019-2021, but it may be too soon for those questions to influence director elections.

Investors should instead await the outcome of various investigations into the matter, ISS said.

In a pre-meeting notice to investors last month, Barclays said that since Staley resigned in November 2021 it had received “no material new evidence” from authorities to challenge the findings of a regulatory investigation into how Staley characterised his relationship with Epstein.

At the time of his resignation, Barclays said the preliminary conclusions of investigations by British financial regulators into how truthful Staley was about his ties to Epstein made “no findings that Mr Staley saw, or was aware of, any of Mr. Epstein’s alleged crimes.”

This report’s information was first seen on REUTERS; to read more, click this link.