José Manuel Barroso, the former European commission president, has raised a few eyebrows with his recent move to U.S. investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, and none more so than the man who replaced him, the current president Jean-Claude Juncker.
Juncker claims Goldman Sachs had a pivotal role in the financial meltdown of 2008 and remarked that Barroso’s move was “questionable”.
“José and I have been friends for many years and I have a very high degree of respect for the man. I have always thought of him as honest and reputable. He has made a decision to move to a company that played a leading role in the economic world crisis between 2007 and 2009, and personally I find the career choice questionable at best,” Juncker said in a TV interview.
The comments come in a week when Juncker has personally begun an investigation concerning whether or not Barroso violated EU regulations by taking the Goldman Sachs position. Barroso will be called for questioning in front of the commission and the main talking points will be his exact responsibilities at the bank.
“Barroso will be feeling the heat. Many of his former colleagues are up in arms at his appointment to Goldman Sachs,” said Head of Corporate trading at Nikko-Desjardins Asset Management, Stuart Poulson. “What’s baffling is why he has chosen an organization that was so implicit in the troubles of 2008. It’s a strange moral decision.”
Barroso has even been called on to give up his pension for bringing the European Union into disrepute by making the career move. The former prime minister of Portugal received a petition signed by over 140,000 people to that effect. In response, he has said publicly that he will carry out tasks at his new company “with total honesty and integrity to the best of my abilities.”
Barroso also wrote a letter to Juncker expressing his devotion to impartiality stating he has not been asked to lobby or advise the bank at any time concerning the British vote to leave the EU. Juncker hit back by saying Barroso would “be treated as a lobbyist by the EU rather than honoured as a former president.”
In response Barroso said “the decision by the president of the EC to make a special investigation out of this affair is inconsistent with what happened concerning other former members, I’m not sure why I’m being singled out.”
