Roger Jenkins (banker)

Background, education and sport

Roger Jenkins was born in England, the son of an oil refinery manager. He attended Edinburgh Academy and studied economics at Heriot-Watt University. In his youth he was an accomplished sprinter, representing Scotland and Great Britain from 1973 to 1978. He won a silver medal at the World Student Games in Rome in 1975 at 400m.

His brother David Jenkins won a silver medal for Great Britain in the 4 x 400 metres relay at the 1972 Olympics, but was later convicted of drug trafficking in the United States and admitted taking steroids to win races during his athletic career.

Early career

Jenkins worked briefly at BP and joined Barclays as a graduate trainee in 1978. From 1982 to 1984 he was head of private placements at Barclays's investment banking division, Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW), in New York City, leaving in 1987 to work for Kleinwort Benson, where he stayed for seven years. He rejoined Barclays in 1994 to set up a group advising companies on risk management.

Structured Capital Markets

Jenkins developed an expertise in structuring and analysing the tax regimes of various countries. His group became Barclays Capital Structured Capital Markets. It recruited beyond banking and included Iain Abrahams, a former lawyer at Slaughter and May. One former colleague suggested that it was Abrahams who was "the brains behind the division", saying of Jenkins: "I wouldn't say he is brilliantly bright, but he is very good at internal politics."

In 2009 The Guardian newspaper reported tales of a macho culture inside the Structured Capital Markets division, where, one source claimed, "the deals are so big you never say billion or million, you just say 16 bucks or 16 quid which meant billion". The same source suggested that tax avoidance "was so big it became the engine of growth for the whole of the investment banking arm". Some calculations had claimed that in 2002 Jenkins and his team generated revenues amounting to more than 100 per cent of Barclays Capital's profits, figures Barclays said were "gross exaggerations", adding that Jenkins was in charge of four businesses – tax-efficient financing being only one – and that those businesses generated less than 20 per cent of the bank's revenues.

Tax arbitrage

A 2006 investigation by the Wall Street Journal claimed that in 2003 Jenkins and his team had set up a company co-owned by Barclays and the US bank Wachovia, Augustus Funding LLC, which was incorporated in Delaware but also had a London address and British directors. Although the company had no employees, products or customers, in 2004 it registered pretax profits of $317 million from assets such as Danish mortgage securities and U.S. Treasuries, on which it paid UK taxes of $94 million.

According to the Wall Street Journal, thanks to "elaborate structure and cash flows", both Barclays and Wachovia were able to take credit for a full payment of the tax, meaning the $94 million could be claimed twice. The report suggested that Augustus Funding was one of at least nine structures involving US banks set up by Jenkins and his team. Barclays called the account of the transactions "materially inaccurate", while a statement from Wachovia said that they had "complied with all applicable laws and regulations".

Recapitalisation and Middle Eastern connections

In April 2008 Barclays appointed Jenkins Executive Chairman of Investment Banking and Investment Management for the Middle East. In November his connections in the region were influential in securing £7.3 billion of investment in Barclays as the bank sought private funding to recapitalise following the financial crisis of that year. Jenkins delivered Qatari involvement in the deal worth £4.5 billion, with Qatar Holdings controlling 13 per cent of the bank and Challenger, an investment vehicle for Sheik Hamad, owning 3 per cent. A further 14 per cent of Barclays was taken up by Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, who was advised on his investment by the financier and dealmaker Amanda Staveley. Speculation suggested that the personal reward for Jenkins was perhaps upwards of £30 million. "With contacts like that," said one Barclays employee, "you just name your price." Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nayhan subsequently sold his stake for a profit of over £2.25 billion.

iShares

Jenkins paid a key role in the sale of Barclays' iShares business as part of the acquisition of their asset management operation, Barclays Global Investors, by the US firm BlackRock for $13.5 billion in June 2009.

After Barclays

Jenkins left Barclays in August 2009. He retained a consultancy role with the bank while establishing his own advisory business based on his contacts in the Persian Gulf.

In February 2010 Jenkins launched an advisory firm in Dublin, Elkstone Capital, looking at opportunities created by the Irish financial crisis. "If you are sitting in Dublin today, there are tremendous opportunities, from capital raising to restructuring to acquisitions," he said. Elkstone Capital closed in December 2011.

In October 2011 it was announced that Jenkins had joined BTG Pactual as a managing partner and would sit on the bank's global management and investment committees.

Personal life

Jenkins first married Catherine McDowell, a financier and banker at Barclays. In 1999 he married Sanela Diana Ćatić, whom he had met in the gym at the Barbican, where Jenkins was living after the end of his first marriage. Diana is a Bosnian who escaped to London from Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.

It was Sanela Diana Ćatić who introduced Jenkins to Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, chairman of the Qatar Investment Authority, in 2006; Sanela Diana Ćatić was a friend of the Sheikh's wife. In 2011 it was announced that their marriage had come to "a natural end" in 2009 and they jointly filed for divorce in late 2011.