Barclays to cut 3,700 jobs as bank tries to emerge from scandal

NEW YORK -- Tarnished by its role in a global interest-rate-rigging scandal, the British investment bank Barclays is trying to regain the public’s trust.

Antony Jenkins, who took over as Barclays’ chief executive last year after the scandal forced out the bank’s top leadership, declared Tuesday: “There will be no going back to the old way of doing things.”

Jenkins, in a speech, added: “We never want to be in a position again of rewarding people for activity that is inconsistent with our values.”

Barclays on Tuesday announced that it would lay off at least 3,700 employees this year as part of a broad restructuring. The bank said it lost $1.6 billion in all of 2012, compared to a $4.7-billion profit in 2011.

Since Barclays agreed last year to pay $450 million to settle U.S. and British investigations into allegations that it, along with banks, colluded to manipulate the benchmark London Inter-Bank Offered Rate, or Libor, Jenkins has sought to regain trust from the public and investors.

On Tuesday, he offered a critique of the banking industry’s recklessness.

“The behaviors which made headlines during the year stemmed from a period of 20 years in banking in which the sector became too aggressive, too focused on the short term, and too disconnected from the needs of customers and clients, and wider society,” he said in a statement. “Barclays was not immune from the impact of these trends, and we suffered reputational damage in 2012 as a consequence.”

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