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LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - Barclays Plc hasappointed Pier Luigi Colizzi, its head of banking in Italy, ashead of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across Europe, MiddleEast and Africa (EMEA).
Polizzi, who has more than 20 years of investment bankingexperience, has been tasked to grow Barclays' EMEA M&Afranchise. He will be based in London.
The appointment, which comes two weeks after chairman JohnMcFarlane axed Chief Executive Anthony Jenkins, is part of aseries of internal promotions.
Colizzi, who joined Barclays in 2012 as head of banking inItaly, is replacing Matthew Ponsonby, who will now focus on hisrole as co-chief operating officer of global banking.
Ponsonby, who has run the bank's EMEA mergers andacquisitions division since 2009, has also been appointed as avice chairman of banking.
Ponsonby came onboard in 2009 as co-head of M&A in EMEA withMark Warham. He later became interim head of M&A in EMEA in July2014 when Warham joined Rothschild.
Meanwhile in Italy, Alessandra Pasini is taking over fromColizzi as head of banking there.
Pasini joined Barclays in 2013 as deputy head of banking forItaly after spending 16 years at Citi.
The appointments are seen as natural progressions, a sourcefamiliar with the matter said, adding the bank aims to build onthe progress it has made since its EMEA banking franchise wasestablished in 2009. (Reporting by Pamela Barbaglia; Editing by David Holmes)