Barclays: Hostility to banks unhealthy

MONTREAL: Barclays PLC chairman David Walker hit back against what he said has become the “political and media industry” of badmouthing banks and bankers, and insisted on banks’ vital role in a freemarket economy.

“The persistence of hostility to banks and bankers, much more marked in Europe than elsewhere, is in my view seriously unhealthy,” he told the economic Conference of Montreal. “The function of banking needs to be recognised as a key contributor to recovery in a developed world, in which credit is principally extended through the banks and the market rather than through state-run conduits.”