The British financial system teetered alarmingly through 2008 and 2009, threatening the collapse of one of Britain’s systemically important banks and the potential ruin of millions of Britons, but for some, Barclays was a chance for serious income.
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| David Mellor, the former UK politician |
Among them was the former UK politician David Mellor. An erstwhile adviser to Amanda Staveley’s firm, PCP Capital Partners, when the £29.5 million hit Staveley’s account in April 2009, Mellor had already been pestering her office for a while over his presumed cut of the Barclays fee pie. Staveley, Mellor had claimed in an insistent email to her office a few weeks earlier, “always insisted that I should stick with her, and large sums of money would come my way... on a number of transactions, but most notably Barclays, I was promised a share of the upside.”
Mellor was strongly hinting at legal action if she didn’t pony up as much as £5 million he claimed she’d promised him. “Throughout the 15 months I spent with Amanda, extravagant promises were made about money, not tied to any specific outcome on transactions, as against my being available to provide all manner of services to her, which I did, intensively, at great cost to myself in terms of time and effort, and of course instead of doing other remunerative things.”
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| Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI |
Staveley also enlisted the help of another pillar of the UK business establishment: the ennobled former head of the CBI, Digby Jones, to recover her monies from the Barclays deal. In an email to Jones on January 8, Staveley asks him to “take those measures you feel necessary to facilitate the return of monies owed to me in relation to the Barclays transaction. I believe that you are working with David Mellor on this matter and that he has briefed you of the situation. PCP is keen to remunerate you and your team for your hard work, and I would welcome the chance to discuss my thoughts in relation to your fees.”
Later, Jones’s role came to include dealing with an irritated Mellor. As the latter says in his email of April 1 to Craig Eadie: “When Digby Jones was being briefed by her [Staveley], the sum of £1 million was volunteered to him as the amount I was due on Barclays.”
On May 5, Mellor wrote to Eadie again. This time he was complaining that the VAT on his fees had not yet been paid. Mellor wrote: “I relied upon you to deal with this not only on the basis of a debt due from Amanda, but a commitment given by your firm.. I want to draw a line under all of this, and so, I thought did you. So where is the cash?”
The fees, it seems, had been paid. A ledger from PCP International shows a payment of £500,000 on April 29 relating to “DMC fees”. The name of Mellor’s business? David Mellor Consultancy.
David Mellor was given several opportunities to respond to questions put by Euromoney, but failed to do so.
