Barclays gives its boss the boot

Barclays has fired its CEO Antony Jenkins after three years on the job. He will be replaced by the chairman, John McFarlane, on an interim basis.

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Antony Jenkins: his reign is over

Barclays has fired its CEO Antony Jenkins after three years on the job. He will be replaced by the chairman, John McFarlane, on an interim basis. The shares rose by 3% on the news. Barclays is the fourth big European bank to change leader this year, underlining banks' struggle to adapt post-crisis.

What the commentators said

But the share price has stalled over the past two years, said Lex in the FT all the gains came in the first six months. That's partly about Barclays' poor profitability and high costs. Last year the bank made a return on equity of -0.2%. The cost-to-income ratio "is far too high" at 70%.

What went wrong? Commercial and retail banking, Jenkins's specialities, are doing well, said Richard Buxton of Old Mutual Global Investors, but "the speed of improvement across the group needs to be more focused... there are too many decisions by committee". It probably didn't help matters, added Patrick Jenkins on FT.com, that McFarlane had little time for Jenkins's "sometimes ponderous analysis and empty-sounding consultancy speak".

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But while he may have disliked his style and slow cost-cutting progress, he shared the overall aim: retrenching from investment banking. So a major change in direction is unlikely. "What that means for former investment banker Tushar Morzaria, the finance director long considered the internal favourite to succeed Jenkins, is unclear."

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.