Protium affair betrays muddled thinking at Barclays Capital

Can the market trust Barclays’ numbers? The bank doesn’t like the question but only has itself to blame that it still comes up.

In 2009, Barclays sold a large package of its doubtful structured credit assets, wrapped by guarantees from equally doubtful monoline insurers, to a new outside vehicle company, Protium, lending it the money to buy the assets and entering a contract to have them managed by a troupe of departing Barclays Capital employees, presumably including many that put the garbage on the books in the first place.

Protium was capitalized with equity whose providers were not named but obviously included the traders themselves.

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