According to the Huffington Post, branding experts don't think the stigma facing Barclays will last, or Barclays Bank Scandal Unlikely To Taint Brooklyn Nets' Fresh Start. So one p.r. expert:
"I think on both the NBA totem pole and in New York professional sports, the Nets don't exactly rank very well in terms of brand value or brand awareness, so Barclays won't really make it worse for them."But maybe those following the Barclays Center will remember some choice bits, such as from today's New York Times, Barclays C.E.O. Resigns as Bank Frames a Defense:
When Barclays bank manipulated key interest rates to bolster profits during the 2008 financial crisis, senior executives said they were following a common practice that regulators implicitly approved, according to documents released by the bank and authorities."Dirty-clean, rather than clean-clean"
...Even as [top executives] resigned, Barclays published documents indicating that some executives thought they were responding to an implied directive from the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank.
Investigators disagree, saying that Barclays "never explicitly told regulators that it was reporting false interest rates that amounted to manipulation," and the bank has been charted with helping other banks do the same thing.
Some email messages have bolstered the evidence for regulators, according to the Times:
And, c'mon, the Nets re-signed Deron Williams.
At one point, a trader called a colleague a “superstar” for furthering the illicit actions. Another employee even acknowledged that the bank was submitting “patently false” rate information.In other words, everyone does it. So few people will care.
In one call on April 2008, a Barclays manager acknowledged to the Financial Services Authority that the bank was understating its Libor submissions. “So, to the extent that, um, the Libors have been understated, are we guilty of being part of the pack? You could say we are,” the Barclays manager said, according to regulatory documents.
...Or, as one Barclays official told the British Bankers Associations, the organization that oversees Libor, “we’re clean but we’re dirty-clean, rather than clean-clean.”
And, c'mon, the Nets re-signed Deron Williams.
I wish people would experience themselves as outraged over this, but, just as with the name citifield, which, despite citibank's role in the crisis of 2008, seems to have simply fallen into the vernacular, I think the same will sadly happen to Barclays. I'm talking about people who are not dense, whom I would consider fair minded and basically bright individuals, who simply don't see it as necessary to connect the dots. Listen to the two sports stations in the city, WESPN, and "the Fan". The commentators on both of these stations seem oblivious to any human problems caused by the new stadium, and are constantly touting the "excitement" the Nets' presence will bring. Unfortunately, this is the universe we seem to be living in at the moment. Sports is the great "separator".
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