LONDON (Alliance News) - Barclays PLC on Wednesday announced a raft of senior management changes which will see its Corporate & Investment Bank split into three units and a change in Chief Executive of Barclays Bank.
The FTSE 100-listed lender is splitting its Corporate & Investment Bank into Global Banking, Global Markets, and Corporate Bank. The units will remain connected but report directly to Group Chief Executive Jes Staley.
In the shake-up, Global Banking will hold Barclays' Advisory, Debt Capital Markets and Equity Capital Markets businesses. Current Global Head of Banking Joe McGrath will run the new unit.
Current Global Head of Equities Stephen Dainton will become interim Global Head of Markets, while Barclays conducts a search for a permanent appointee.
Head of Corporate Banking will be Alistair Currie.
Activist investor Edward Bramson has long been seeking for Barclays to scale back its investment banking business and will be standing at the lender's annual general meeting in May hoping to get a seat on the board.
Bramson spent about GBP900 million in March last year to build a 5.5% stake in Barclays through his investment vehicle Sherborne Investors. He was previously re-buffed in an attempt to get a seat on the board in December.
Elsewhere in the shake-up, current CEO of Barclays UK Ashok Vaswani is moving to the newly created role of Global Head of Consumer Banking & Payments. He will report directly to Staley.
Vaswani will oversee the group's consumer banking and cards & payments businesses in the UK and internationally.
Current Head of Retail Lending Matt Hammerstein will take up Vaswani's vacant role. Hammerstein will report to Vaswani and Staley.
Barry Rodrigues and Karen Frank, who run Barclays's cards & payments and private bank operations, will report to Vaswani.
Group CEO Staley said: "We are, today, the transatlantic consumer and wholesale bank, with global reach, which we set out to shape when we embarked on our strategy in March of 2016. Restructuring is behind us, our major legacy issues are largely dealt with, and our focus now is on running and growing our business, and pursuing improved returns in line with our stated targets.
"To aid that agenda, I am making some leadership changes to ensure a much stronger and closer focus on the two respective hemispheres of our diversified group, our Consumer and Wholesale businesses."
Shares in Barclays were up 2.0% Wednesday at 156.32 pence each.
Barclays (BARC)