Last year, Barclays Bank received the largest fine ever handed down by a U.K. regulator for its role in manipulating the world’s biggest foreign exchange markets. The toxic nature of the organisation’s corporate governance may be responsible for its own code word (Cadmium) to describe the five-year investigation into how it arranged a cash bailout using Middle Eastern funds during the financial crisis to stop the bank being partially nationalised.

Neil Hodge is a freelance business journalist and photographer based in Nottingham, United Kingdom. He writes on insurance and risk management, corporate governance, internal audit, compliance, and legal...