Business Diary: April 30

But the Blue Eagle bank is fighting back and on Wednesday gave a presentation to SMEs in Yorkshire bravely entitled Can Banks Be Trusted?

Tim Kiy, corporate affairs director at Barclays’ retail division, told the audience about the new CEO Antony Jenkins’ vision to create the “go-to” bank and its new Life Skills education programme and work experience matching service.

Afterwards, Mr Kiy fielded questions from Diary. “Yes I think you can (trust banks again),” he said. “But I think we have got to demonstrate that to customers and the public at large.

“This is about deeds, not by words, and the initiatives I have talked about are the start of the changes we are making at Barclays to address that.” Are these deeds tick-box exercises so Barclays can carry on paying massive bonuses to its investment bankers?

“No, not all. They are not tick-box exercises. If you look at the work we are doing on youth unemployment, in particular the life skills, we have for the last four years had a programme looking at financial education, spending about £5m a year and we put a million people through that financial education programme.

“This is not something that’s fly by night, something that we’re going to dip in and dip out of. It’s substantive change to help the communities and society we serve as customers.”

How long will it be before Barclays can move on from the toxic legacy of Bob Diamond, the former CEO?

“I think the banking industry and banks as a whole have probably got a couple a years before they can convince customers, again for what we do, rather than what we say, that we are on their side, that we are supporting them.

“This is a long-term issue for us and our chief executive Antony Jenkins has made it very clear that he sees it as a long-term investment for us to be able to regain the trust of customers and the public and large.” It’s good to see Barclays supporting education and work experience programmes, activities that might have appealed to its Quaker founders rather more than the likes of Rich Ricci, the former investment banking chief who collected £17m in deferred bonuses earlier this month.

Flaks hacked off

The annual hacks v flaks football and netball matches produced some impressive displays from the country’s leading financial journalists (hacks) and their PR counterparts (flaks – as in “take the”).

The netball team – many of whom had not played since they were forced to wear nylon netball skirts and gym knickers at school – bravely stepped out on to court on Sunday with a minimal knowledge of the rules but a healthy enthusiasm for a trot around. The game got going with a feisty 3-0 lead racked up by Laura Parsons at Deloitte as goal shooter.

Unfortunately, a decade or so out of school meant the flaks then gave away a ton of penalty passes, which gave the hacks the opportunity to make their mark with captain Ros Snowdon at the Yorkshire Post and Jo Atkin at Mortgage Finance Gazette scoring another seven goals.

It should also be noted that the girls were in no way distracted by Homelands hottie Damien Lewis, who was playing footie nearby. All efforts to take a snap were thwarted by his protection, aka his father-in-law, who insisted: “No photos!”

Fax of the matter

THE virtues of networking were highlighted at Yorkshire Business Market yesterday.

Speaking at the business-to-business networking event, the mayor of Harrogate, Coun Robert Windass, said: “Many of you will be old enough to remember the original adverts that were on the television for fax machines.

“They showed one manufacturer sending a fax of a fork and then the other one sent one back of a knife.

“With networking they managed to get together and have knives and forks. Things have moved on from there but I’m sure that today you will be able to network with people here, and who knows we might even get a spoon in the equation?”

A show of loyalty

Diary is always heartened by tales of loyalty to a single employer. John Manship has retired from Leeds Building Society after a career spanning more then 44 years. He joined, straight from school aged 18, in 1968 as a cashier clerk at the society’s Sheffield branch.

He left his hometown in 1976 to move to Dewsbury, where he became the society’s branch manager. The number one single on his first working day was Those were the Days by Mary Hopkin, which stayed at number one for six weeks.