(Adds confirmation from company)
LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - British bank Barclays Plc's said its "bad bank" business head Eric Bommensath willleave at the end of this month after 17 years at the bank.
Bommensath was formerly the co-head of Barclays' investmentbank and was put in charge of the bad bank, which was set up inMay and tasked with getting rid of assets the bank does notwant.
Most of the assets were from the investment bank, but italso included its retail banking operations in Italy, France,Spain and Portugal.
Barclays said on Wednesday two other bad bank executives,John Mahon and Harry Harrison, will take over as co-heads of thebusiness.
Barclays set up the bad bank as a key part of its plan toshrink the bank, especially its investment bank, in an effort tocut costs and get rid of unwanted assets to improve returns forshareholders.
Barclays put around 115 billion pounds ($174 billion) ofrisk-weighted assets into the bad bank in May and intends to cutthat to below 50 billion pounds by the end of 2016. The banksaid the non-core assets had been reduced to 81 billion at theend of September.($1 = 0.6605 pounds) (Reporting by Steve Slater in London and Aurindom Mukherjee inBengaluru; Editing by Alan Crosby and Louise Heavens)
Barclays (BARC)