Spin of which Shane Warne would (not) be proud

Last Friday the trustee and chair of the Open Banking Implementation Entity suddenly quit following an investigation into sexist and racist behaviour.

The report by the Competition and Markets Authority said the agency had allowed “a culture of bullying and intimidation to prevail”.

That’s bad, right?

Some choice words from the report itself: “lack of appropriate corporate governance”, “it is clear change is needed”, “simply unacceptable”.

What did the OBIE say about all this?

“As the OBIE’s Implementation Trustee, Imran Gulamhuseinwala has been hugely instrumental in delivering a success story not just for open banking but for open data more broadly.”

Uh-huh.

Imran himself says: “As the Implementation Trustee, my remit was to deliver on the OBIE’s Roadmap, and lay the foundations for a world leading open banking ecosystem. It’s a great source of pride that during my tenure the OBIE team have accomplished that.”

Now is apparently, the “natural time” to “hand over the reins”.

I can find no mention of the investigation, no sympathy for or apology to the staff.

It’s hard to see why anyone would think this a good approach to public relations.

(Let’s add the usual rejoinder that this probably isn’t the fault of the actual PR people, who may have grimaced through every sentence of that release.)

It is spin of Shane Warne-like proportions, except not as effective.