The Independent, a British newspaper has an article about the Brooklyn Paper/Barclays Bank controversy.
When Barclays agreed to pay more than $300m (£152m) to get its name
on a new basketball stadium in Brooklyn, it thought it had pulled off
one of the most exciting marketing coups in American sport.But just a few weeks on, the British bank is battling to prevent a
public relations disaster, as black leaders demand the deal be scrapped
because of Barclays’ historic support for the apartheid regime in South
Africa and what they believe are profits it made from slavery.Barclays says the allegations about its links to the 18th-century
slave trade are "simply not true" – based on an inaccurate book written
60 years ago – and it is now mired in an exchange of historical
documents with opponents.Politicians, churchmen and newspaper columnists say it would be an
insult to black residents to name the complex the Barclays Centre, as
planned.The basketball arena will be the new home for the New Jersey Nets,
and forms the central part of a $4bn Frank Gehry-designed complex that
includes 16 skyscrapers and will, according to its proponents,
stimulate a renaissance in an underprivileged area of New York’s outer
borough.Letitia James, a Brooklyn council member, said that accepting
hundreds of millions of dollars from Barclays was like "eating the
fruit of a poisonous tree". She said: "Brooklyn has been described as
the ‘black belt’ of New York City, and because of their past practices,
I do not believe it is appropriate that this deal goes ahead. We’ve no
legal grounds to stop it, but we will be putting moral pressure on the
shareholders and investors in the development project."Barclays was forced to pull out of apartheid-era South Africa in
1986 after a long and bitter fight by equal rights campaigners around
the world. It eventually calculated that the damage to its reputation
was going to cost it more than selling out of what was then the
country’s second-largest bank.