Are you in a pension fund? In the LGPS? Then here is your chance to help remove Bob Diamond from his position as CEO of Barclays.... if there really is a time for a Shareholder Spring (revolt) then it is now.... contact your pension scheme and suggest that as the beneficiary of the fund's Barclays shares you want him removed.
Tell them you are responding to Vince Cable who has urged shareholders in UK banks to rise up and purge their companies of corrupt executives, who he says have allowed "systemic abuse" to take root in the banking system.
The business secretary, writing in the Observer, says it is now clear that no one at Barclays Capital, the investment bank that triggered the market-rigging scandal, is prepared to take responsibility for endemic corruption, so the ultimate owners of banks must take matters into their own hands.
The ultimate owners are the pension funds in the UK and around the world who hold Barclays shares. As a FTSE100 company anyone who saves in a pension scheme will hold Barclays shares.
Cable says shareowner power will be crucial. "Regulators are a backstop: they don't own banks," he writes. "The governance at the top of our leading banks has been shown to be lamentably weak. No one at the top of Barclays will take responsibility for systemic abuse.
"Shareholders, the owners, have a major responsibility here. I am bringing in legislation to strengthen their control over pay and bonuses, through binding votes, but shareholders have to get a stronger grip on weak boards and out-of-control executives."
All of our pension funds should be writing to Barclays Chair and calling for all of the Executives to be removed starting with Diamond. You can do your bit by contacting your funds and requesting they write to Barclays.
