Patrick Hosking: A quick note to the boss of accident-prone Barclays: ‘Venkat, the honeymoon is over’ | Business

Barclays is the corporate soap opera that just keeps on running. Other companies might spend a year or two in the spotlight. Like buses, scandals and blunders tend to come along in clusters and then vanish. But not for Barclays, which seems to have gripped, appalled and entertained us all for 25 years and more.

Among its banking peers, Royal Bank of Scotland (now NatWest) has had its moments of course, as has Lloyds, but neither seems to have got into quite so many embarrassing scrapes over quite such a long period as the blue-eagle bank.

The episode last week, when it had to admit it had broken the rules by issuing without permission $15 billion of securities to investors, is another example of