Tim throsby12 May 2017 18:18
Barclays’ new corporate and investment banking boss, Tim Throsby, recently stood in a hall at the bank’s London offices to address over 100 members of his team and dozens of others who had dialled in from abroad.
He started by explaining who he was.
Last year Barclays chief executive Jes Staley turned to Mr Throsby, a relatively unknown former JPMorgan Chase executive, to run Barclays International, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the bank’s revenue.
The 50-year-old Australian spent most of his career overseeing equities-trading desks. Now he is responsible for a franchise that includes German credit cards, rich clients in Switzerland and a bond trading desk in New York.
In 2016, Mr Staley unveiled a sweeping restructuring of Barclays, which included paring its 100-year presence in Africa in favour of a bet to stick with its unloved investment bank. Its shares have rallied 50 per cent over the past 12 months, helped by the prospect of rising rates.
“The key question is whether Barclays is benefiting from a rising tide or whether the action he is taking is a dominant driver,” said Thomas Moore, an investment director at Standard Life Investments.
To turn around the British lender, Mr Staley handpicked a team from his former employer JPMorgan. Barclays’ chief financial officer, chief risk officer and chief operating officer are alumni of the US bank. Finding someone to run Barclays International was the last piece of the puzzle.
Known for his tieless appearance, Mr Throsby built a reputation as a decisive, and at times abrasive, operator over a three-decade career.
At JPMorgan, he overhauled the equities franchise, competing fiercely to access the bank’s huge balance sheet and allow clients to take more risk.
Former colleagues and clients expect the rugby-loving executive to repeat the feat at Barclays’ investment bank.
“He has significant global experience,” said Francis Troise, chief executive of ITG, a New York-based brokerage, who previously worked closely with Mr Throsby at JPMorgan. Under Mr Throsby, he said, “business gets done”.
Barclays has no plans to pump more capital into Mr Throsby’s unit. However, he will have the freedom to reallocate resources to the investment bank from within his wider business, which includes big corporate customers, a US credit card business and wealth management.
Mr Throsby forged his career in Asia jumping between big investment banks. After stints at Macquarie Group, Goldman Sach and Lehman Brothers, he moved to Citadel in Hong Kong. When the hedge fund firm retreated from Asia in the throes of the financial crisis, Mr Throsby quit and travelled to Britain to study law at the University of Oxford. He never finished.
In 2010, he joined JPMorgan to run its European equity derivatives business. It was there he caught the eye of Mr Staley, who was heading up the lender’s investment