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* Walker cautions against heavy-handed rules in forex marker
* Walker says emphasis should be on raising staff standards
* Barclays unveils academy to improve compliance training (Adds more detail, background)
By Huw Jones
LONDON, July 3 (Reuters) - Barclays, trying torestore its reputation after a series of scandals, has created aCompliance Career Academy in partnership with CambridgeUniversity to improve staff training.
Barclays was the first bank to be fined for the allegedrigging of benchmark interest rates, which resulted in a $450million fine and cost Bob Diamond, the bank's CEO at the time,his job. It was fined 26 million pounds ($44.24 million) in Maythis year for manipulating gold prices, and last week New York'sattorney general filed a lawsuit alleging fraud in its "darkpool" trading venue.
Barclays Chairman David Walker said the new training wouldensure that compliance staff could go a step further and mentortraders and other colleagues to improve culture and behaviour.
"Compliance has not been seen as a serious enough specialistactivity," Walker said. "Our track record in culture has notbeen good. It's important for us all to have a concept ofculture, conduct and compliance."
Compliance officers, along with internal auditors, have longbeen seen as vulnerable to pressure from sales staff not to puttoo much grit in the profit-making machine.
Walker acknowledged this was an issue in the past, sayingthat "soft risks" like avoiding reputational damage were thehardest of all to deal with.
"One way of seeing it is that we are guilty until we proveourselves to be innocent," Walker said.
Bankers have been vilified in the press and by shareholdersand politicians for getting huge bonuses despite the regulatoryscandals. More than a third of Barclays' shareholders failed toback the bank's compensation plan at its annual shareholdermeeting this year, angered by a 10 percent rise in 2013 bonusesdespite a one-third drop in profits.
The new compliance programme will be taught in partnershipwith the Cambridge Judge Business School.
Walker also said raising standards among traders was thebest solution for an overhaul of the foreign exchange market,currently under investigation by global regulators.
The probe into the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market islooking into allegations of collusion and price rigging.Regulators are due to report in the coming months on possiblereforms of how forex benchmarks are set.
"The problem is the way the market is vulnerable to taintand malpractice," Walker told reporters. "It needs somesensitive fine-tuning."
He said heavy regulation would spoil the market by throwingout the baby with the bath water and simply spur traders to findways round the rules.
In the distant past, abuses such as frontrunning in currencymarkets were widespread before it was made a criminal offence inthe 1980s, and regulators have not looked at the market untilthe past 2-3 years, Walker said.
"It's timely for the market to be examined."
($1 = 0.5877 British Pounds) (Editing by Steve Slater and Jane Merriman)
