That scandal resulted in a 642,430-pound personal fine ($833,000), about 10% of his annual income. It also resulted in a $15 million fine for the bank from New York regulators.
A Barclays spokesman, Tom Hoskin, said on Thursday’s conference call that “there’s always the option to make an adjustment” to Staley’s compensation, given how pay is deferred for the bank’s directors.
Staley said on Bloomberg TV that his professional ties to Epstein dated to 2000, when he took charge of JPMorgan’s private bank, where the financier was already a client.
Epstein himself had previously confirmed that relationship. JPMorgan are “probably the best private bankers in the world,” Epstein said in a 2003 interview with journalist David Bank on his private Caribbean island. “The head of private banking you should talk to -- Jes Staley.”
Repercussions from the Epstein scandal continue to roil the business and political worlds, given his decades of cultivating ties to U.S. and British elites. Prominent business people with ties to him include billionaires Glenn Dubin, who has since retired from his hedge fund, and Leslie Wexner, whose L Brands Inc. apparel empire is in talks to be broken up.
Staley helped arrange JPMorgan’s 2004 acquisition of a majority stake in Dubin’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital Management, a deal that helped elevate Staley within the bank. At the time, Staley ran JPMorgan’s asset management unit.
Staley visited Epstein in Florida when he was serving his sentence following a 2008 guilty plea of soliciting prostitution, in one case with a minor, according to a New York Times report last year. As recently as April 2015, just before he joined Barclays, Staley and his wife visited Epstein for several hours at his private Caribbean island.
Staley said on Thursday that his relationship with Epstein “began to taper off as I left JPM and contact became much less frequent in 2013, 2014,” before ending in 2015.
“Obviously I thought I knew him well, and I didn’t,” Staley said.
--With assistance from Marion Dakers, Donal Griffin and Tom Metcalf.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.