Why Whistleblowers Get Paid in the U.S. but Not in Britain

By Liam Vaughan, Bloomberg Businessweek

In April, Barclays Plc said its chief executive officer, Jes Staley, was under investigation for trying to unmask an employee who’d raised ethical concerns about a senior staff member. Although the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says Staley wasn’t successful in identifying the so-called whistleblower, the incident raised questions about Britain’s scant protections for workers who aim to expose wrongdoing on the job—and highlights the difference between the British and American approaches.

In September the British government introduced rules that require companies to appoint a “whistleblower champion” and prohibit retaliation against employees who bypass internal ...