Former star banker Jes Staley is 68 years old, but instead of retiring he wants back into the investment business – even as he seeks to repair a reputation ravaged by his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, On The Money has learned.
That’s why the former Barclays CEO is putting himself through the wringer in UK court, testifying in a civil appeal of a ruling by the UK Financial Conduct Authority that he knew nothing about the scale of his old pal Epstein’s dark side – namely charges that he had sex with minors.
It’s all an effort to reverse the proposed ban that could make him unemployable at a major firm for the rest of his life, former colleagues say.
His gut must have been turning more on Wednesday. Taking the stand at a British court known as London’s Upper Tribunal, Staley admitted under oath that he once had sex with one of Epstein’s assistants.
The age of the assistant was not revealed, but consensus among bankers who know Staley is that the disclosure only makes his longshot bid all the more difficult.
“I’m not sure what he’s trying to accomplish,” one former colleague told On The Money. “Who’s going to hire him?”
Staley’s fall is in many ways Shakespearean. He was once one of those “masters of the universe” with a charmed career on Wall Street. He worked at JP Morgan for nearly three decades in a variety of senior roles and was considered a possible successor to CEO Jamie Dimon. With Dimon signaling he has no intention of leaving anytime soon (which is still pretty much the case), he left to join the big UK-based bank, Barclays.
But Staley’s JPM career also had some dark corners. He ran the asset management division and private client group when the bank also counted Epstein, then a high-end wealth manager, as one of its biggest clients for about 15 years. The business relationship then turned into what Staley has called a “profound” friendship that included career advice, frequent visits to Epstein’s home and trips to his private island estate in the Caribbean.
Staley also championed Epstein inside the firm when some risk managers warned that Epstein’s 2008 conviction of having sex with a minor was enough to cut him off.
Staley left JPM and in 2015 ended up as CEO of Barclays, even as the relationship drew more attention. Private lawsuits filed by Epstein’s accusers mounted. Epstein was arrested in 2019 and accused of a massive child sex-trafficking scheme. Facing a life sentence, he was found dead in his jail cell in an apparent suicide.
Staley has never been accused of any crime, and he denies knowing the full scale of Epstein’s improprieties. Nevertheless, he was forced out at Barclays in 2021 as the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK-equivalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission, launched an investigation into allegations that Staley misled the agency and the Barclay’s board about his dealings with Epstein.
The agency subsequently barred him from doing business in the UK, a near death sentence for any financial executive’s career given the importance of “The City,” or London, in global banking.
Staley, of course, isn’t the only powerful man who had a friendship with Epstein for many reasons including his vast connections to the super wealthy, as well as the upper levels of academia and philanthropy. Like Staley, many of Epstein’s old friends say they knew almost nothing about his personal life. They all saw his 2008 guilty plea as a minor transgression given his light jail sentence (just 13 months).
What makes Staley different is that he was considered a talented financial executive, his career was cut short (in his view unfairly), and that he’s willing to air his dirty-Epstein related laundry in public to get his ban reversed. In his appeal, he’s denying the charges in the FCA’s ban and states that the agency is “seeking to destroy my reputation.”
Yes, Staley feels wronged, but is any of this worth it? Former colleagues say his chances of getting a big job in banking as pretty low, even if he convinces the court to reverse the ban. Meanwhile he must endure a public shaming over everything he knows about one of the most despised people in the world of finance.
On Tuesday for instance, Staley testified in court that he was “shocked and surprised” by Epstein’s 2019 arrest. He also said he thought his 2008 guilty plea was “an isolated transgression,” and that if he was “aware of his monstrous activities, I would not have maintained a relationship.”
JPM had sued Staley for allegedly ignoring Epstein’s abhorrent behavior, which Staley denied. JPM later dropped the case when it settled its own Epstein-related contretemps with the US Virgin Islands, which sued the bank over similar issues .
During this same testimony this week, Staley said: “Mr. Epstein was also well connected within the upper levels of JP Morgan…He seemed to be aware of things relating to the bank that I was not aware of.” He said other JPM execs could have stopped Epstein from doing business with the bank.
But the real fireworks in the case went down on Wednesday, when Staley was asked about his deposition in that JPM lawsuit, and his admission he had sex with one of Epstein’s staff. As Staley put it before UK court: “Oftentimes I would go to Epstein’s apartment and he would be late and she and I got the chance to know each other.” They then had sex, “much to my embarrassment today.” He also stated that Epstein had no knowledge of the affair.
A lawyer for Staley didn’t return a call for comment; a JPM rep had no comment, though On The Money has learned that the bank is so worried about what might come out in the trial that it has a legal officer in the courtroom throughout the proceedings.
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