Aaaah, Barclays

Are some of you old enough to remember the last 'once in a lifetime' event that wreaked havoc on our planet? The 2008 global financial crisis. (Sorry, you weren't thinking we meant the loss of 17 per cent of the Amazon rainforest in the past 50 years, were you?) Maybe you thought we meant one of the other 'once in a lifetime' events, Brexit and Donald Trump (if only his parents had had pizza that night and gone straight to sleep ...). Well, this fourth 'once in a lifetime' event, the most recent pandemic until the next one, is having a very different effect on Barclays Bank. Or is it? You may recall that Barclays got off a little lightly in 2008. A dealmaker who played a key part in finding backers for Barclays emergency fundraising during the 2008 financial crisis sought (a rounded up) £1 billion in damages from the bank. This was linked to the ALLEGEDLY unpaid fees due for setting in motion an investment of around £3.5 billion from Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a dear, dear friend of the NTI newsroom.