Antony Jenkins was fired after a long running disagreement with the board over how the bank should be run.
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The ex- head of Barclays’ retail division is said to have struggled to place on the straight and narrow, financially at least, the investment bank, which is Barclay’s worst performing arm.
8 July 2015: Antony Jenkins removed three years after taking over as chief executive.
A ex- JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) executive, Morzaria joined the Barclays board and its executive committee in October 2013 as group finance director.
In the group’s statement today Jenkins defended his tenure: “In the summer of 2012, I became Group Chief Executive at a particularly hard time for Barclays”.
Commenting on the news, chairman John McFarlane explained that the board believed the bank needs to become more efficient: What we need is profit improvement.
Led by Michael Rake, the bank’s senior independent director, the directors felt that “a different catalyst, a different person running it was urgently required”, Mr. McFarlane said.
Jenkins added: “I want to thank the people of Barclays for their tireless efforts and supports in achieving these results and for my own part I am looking forward to the professional opportunities that lie ahead“.
A statement released by the bank said that they required “new set of skills” at the top.
But he added: “Nevertheless, we are leaving value on the table and a new approach is required”.
“We… need to get the errors of the past behind us, to achieve a satisfactory rate of revenue growth, greater cost discipline and a more dynamic reallocation of capital”, Reuters reported the former executive as saying at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in April.
Jenkins joined the bank in August 2012, replacing Bob Diamond who finally left Barclays after its traders were implicated in the Libor rigging scandal.
Cenkos Securities’ Sandy Chen discusses the surprise announcement of leadership changes at Barclays and outlook for the company. Barclays PLC now has a 20 simple moving average of 268.72 and also a 50 day moving average now at 266.84. But the multistage strategy went in fits and starts, and many investors, analysts and staff failed to fully warm to Mr. Jenkins as a leader. Market capitalisation is now £43,770.17m at the time of this report.
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The Libor system – which has since been overhauled – was found to be open to abuse, with some traders lying about borrowing costs to boost trading positions or make their bank seem more secure.
