CEO: Bank giant Barclays might not win back public trust for a decade It could take up to a decade for banking giant Barclays to win back the public's trust, its chief executive has admitted. Antony Jenkins, who became boss of Britain's second-biggest high street bank in August 2012, said the series of scandals that have rocked the banking system, including the mis-selling of payment protection insurance and Libor fixing, had damaged the bank's reputation over the long term. Trust is a very easy thing to lose, and a very hard thing to win back. In my view it will take several years - probably five to 10 - to rebuild trust in Barclays," he said. Question of trust: Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins believes it could take up to a decade for public trust in the bank to return. Jenkins made the comments in a talk to students at Brooke House Sixth Form College in Clapton, East London, which featured on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, guest edited by the Barclays boss on Tuesday. "I can only be responsible for Barclays but I'm hoping in what we do at Barclays, we can also rebuild trust in banking," he said. Barclays was the first bank to admit traders manipulated Libor lending rates and was hit with a £290million fine for the scandal 18 months ago. Jenkins, who was appointed chief executive after his predecessor Bob Diamond was forced to step down over the bank's role in the Libor scandal, also expressed frustration that too much emphasis is placed on short-term factors such as share prices. Scandal hit: High street lenders have been hit by a slew of financial scandals and mis-selling claims over the past few years. The Barclays boss, formerly head of the retail banking arm at the lender, hinted at a long-term strategy to overhaul the bank in September, pledging to restore Barclay's reputation. Jenkins said that he has set Barclays the target of being more trusted than not by 2018, with progress measured and monitored in a systematic way. London School of Economics economist John Kay told the Today programme that the banks 'by the way they have behaved over the last 20 years' have systematically destroyed their relationship with their customers, with management setting up 'misaligned incentives' that effectively pay corrupt bankers. Kay said he was not particularly optimistic about the future of the banking sector: 'We're starting to have the right debate but we're quite a long way from understanding how corrupt parts of the financial services sector had become or in rethinking the ways in which we approach business.'. Mr Jenkins said he agreed with much of the economist's comments, but he said that under the right leadership banks still had the ability to redeem themselves from past failures. 'If you want a different sort of organisational performance, a more ethical business, you're going to have to change culture. If you take a long-term perspective, you'll build the right culture,' said Jenkins. 'I can only be responsible for Barclays but I'm hoping in what we do at Barclays we can also rebuild trust in banking.' The reduction of consumer confidence in high street banks is not only true for Barclays, however, with Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and the Co-op Bank all also having been hit by scandals and big fines in recent years.