Edward Bramson: the quiet activist barging into Barclays

Edward Bramson may have failed to secure a seat on the board last week, but past form suggests his Sherborne investment fund will soon be back to shake things up. 

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© Matt Greenslade
(Image credit: © Matt Greenslade / www.photo-nyc.com)

Slightly longer than a year ago, when Barclays woke up one day "to find a bull called Bramson in the shop", the City prepared for some sport, says The Guardian. "An activist investor out of New York, with a taste for barging into boardrooms and metaphorically smashing up the crockery," Bramson had taken a 5% stake in the bank in hopes of dictating terms. His chief aim drastically shrinking Barclays' underperforming investment arm put him in direct conflict with CEO Jes Staley (an American, formerly of Morgan Stanley) who had staked his reputation on reviving it as a key engine of the bank.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.