| Roger Jenkins | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Roger Allan Jenkins 30 September 1955 |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Edinburgh Academy and Heriot-Watt University, Institute of Bankers A.C.I.B., Dip F.S. |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, Financier |
Roger Allan Jenkins (born 30 September 1955[1]) joined BTG Pactual, Brazil's largest independent investment bank and asset manager, in early 2011. He is on the Management committee and on the Investment committee [2]. He was formerly with Barclays Capital, where he was Chief Executive of Barclays Capital's Private Equity, Principal Investments and Structured Capital Markets, and from April 2008 was Executive Chairman of Investment Banking and Investment Management for the Middle East.[3][4]
Jenkins's expertise was in tax planning. Estimates suggested that in 2005 Jenkins made somewhere between £40 million and £75 million, making him reputedly the highest paid banker in the City.[3][5] That year the board of directors at Barclays, which did not include Jenkins, earned between them £12.3 million in salaries, benefits and bonuses.[6]
In 2008 Jenkins was an influential figure in the investment of £7.3 billion in Barclays by the ruling families of Abu Dhabi and Qatar, and by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund.[7]
He divides his time between Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, and the Middle East.[2]
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Roger Jenkins was born in England, the son of an oil refinery manager. He attended Edinburgh Academy[5] and studied economics at Heriot-Watt University.[6] 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.[5] His brother David Jenkins (athlete) won a silver medal for Great Britain in the 4 x 400 metres relay at the 1972 Olympics.[6]
Jenkins worked briefly at BP[8] and joined Barclays as a graduate trainee in 1978.[1] From 1982 to 1984 he was head of private placements at Barclays's investment banking division, Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW), in New York, leaving in 1987 to work for Kleinwort Benson, where he stayed for seven years.[9] He rejoined Barclays in 1994 to set up a group advising companies on risk management and leasing.[6][10]
Jenkins developed an expertise in tax arbitrage, analysing the tax regimes of various countries so that rich individuals and major companies could exploit differences in those taxation rules.[8] His group became Barclays Capital Structured Capital Markets. It recruited beyond banking and included Iain Abrahams, a former lawyer at Slaughter & May.[10] 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."[1] Another observer agreed that Jenkins is "a far better operator than he is a technocrat."[3]
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".[11] The same source suggested that tax avoidance "was so big it became the engine of growth for the whole of the investment banking arm".[11] 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.[1]
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".[8][10]
In 1999 Jenkins married Sanela Dijana Ćatić, whom he had met in the gym at the Barbican, where Jenkins was living after the end of his marriage to his first wife, a banker at Barclays.[12] Dijana is a Bosnian Muslim who escaped to London from Sarajevo during the country's civil war. In 2011 it was announced that the Jenkins marriage had come to "a natural end" in 2009.[13][2]
In April 2008 Barclays appointed Jenkins Executive Chairman of Investment Banking and Investment Management for the Middle East.[4] 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 Quatari 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.[14] 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.[7][15] Speculation suggested that the personal reward for Jenkins was perhaps upwards of £30 million.[15] "With contacts like that," said one Barclays employee, "you just name your price."[3]
It was also reported[16][17] that Jenkins paid a key role in the sale of Barclays's 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.[18]
In July 2009 it was reported that Jenkins was to leave Barclays. It was suggested that he would retain a consultancy role with the bank while establishing his own advisory business based on his contacts in the Persian Gulf.[9][16][17][19][20] He left the bank in August that year.[21]
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.[22]