Barclays Share News (BARC)

Barclays has appointed John McFarlane as chairman to replace David Walker, who will step down following the bank’s annual general meeting in 2015.McFarlane, who is currently chairman of Aviva and FirstGroup, will take on the role on 1 January. He will step down from Aviva and FirstGroup in April and July 2015, respectively.Walker said: “I am delighted that Barclays has appointed John McFarlane to succeed me as chairman. We are making good progress toward the delivery of our strategic objectives and I have every confidence that John will work very successfully with Antony Jenkins in leading this great bank through the next phase of that journey.”As chairman of Barclays, McFarlane will receive an annual salary of £0.8m inclusive of the £0.25m he will receive as non-executive director.“The Barclays board set very challenging requirements for its new chairman and I am very pleased that in John McFarlane we have identified someone who met all of our criteria,” Sir John Sunderland, who chaired the process to appoint a successor to Walker, said.“John is an enormously experienced and respected banker with global experience of both retail and investment banking and he will bring great leadership, integrity and knowledge to the role.”The appointment of McFarlane, a former board member at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), is seen as part of Barclays’ strategy to improve its culture.McFarlane will be working alongside Antony Jenkins, the group chief executive, and together they will be tasked with rehabilitating the bank’s name, after Barclays endured a difficult 12 months after another shareholder row over bonus payments to staff.Along with RBS, Lloyds, Goldman Sachs and other 10 banks, Barclays were sued by a major US pension fund after they allegedly conspired to rig a key benchmark used to price interest rate swaps and other derivatives.The Alaska Electrical Pension Fund (AEPF) accused the banks of agreeing to jointly manipulate the ISDAfix in order to fiddle payments to investors.Jenkins has stated he intends to overhaul Barclays by shrinking its investment banks and cutting thousands of jobs across its worldwide operations and, over the last couple of months, investors seem to have warmed up to his long-term plans.In a statement released on Friday, Barclays said its new chairman will bring “extensive experience” in investment, retail and corporate banking, as well as in strategy risk, insurance and cultural change.Investors have reacted positively to McFarlane’s appointment and the bank was the second-highest riser on the FTSE 100.