Man: Sexy But Stupid P.E. Exec. Was Also A Shrewish Fraud, Although That Last Bit’s Probably Not True

Asset managers owned by minorities and/or women run just over 1% of that industry’s $71 trillion hoard. A trial in London is helpfully illustrating why.

Amanda Staveley, who runs one such firm, private equity shop PCP Capital, is suing Barclays for allegedly screwing both her firm and her client, an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, over. Specifically, she says the bank gave far better terms to the Qatari investors who helped bail it out back in 2008, while also refusing to pay her for her troubles.

For its part, the Barclays executives who dealt with her say they didn’t know much about her beyond that she was nice to look at but a bit thick. That’s remarkably uncharitable towards a woman trying to help save the bank those executives and their colleagues ran into the ground, but an experience we’d guess lots of women in finance have suffered similarly.

The folks over at Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Company had a few other pieces of the Staveley puzzle. According to its former director, David Forbes, she was also annoying and a liar. Alas, that may have been a bit of pot-kettle action on his part.

“The evidence you have given in your witness statement and in court this afternoon in connection with the allegation of fraud which you are making against PCP is untrue, isn’t it?” Weekes asked Forbes.

“I think it is perhaps inaccurate, out of sequence,” Forbes said….

At the end of the proceeding on day 22 of the trial, Staveley’s lawyer, Joe Smouha QC, told Justice David Waksman that Forbes’ evidence is “wholly unreliable” and that his witness statement made “serious allegations of dishonesty which were entirely new, unpleaded and […] unfounded, which should never have been adopted by Barclays”.