Dallas, Texas 05/09/2014 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) – Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE:BCS) is now under pressure to boost its returns, and will downsize 7,000 staff at the investment bank, which is around a quarter of its total, & signaled the company’s effort to build an international bank is now over. Antony Jenkins, the company’s CEO, said that this plan will bring its number of jobs to now be cut right across the company by 2016 to 19,000, including its 12,000 said the lender in February that it would eliminate in 2014. BCS will NOW create a bank to dispose of the 115B pounds ($195B) of assets, including the European consumer -arm. The bank will now primarily target U.K. & U.S.
Focused approach
It will serve even fewer clients, while the Asian unit will now become more focused said Jenkins. Jenkins said on the conference call that that investment bank is very exposed to the volatility in fixed-income & currencies as well as commodities & the group is extra exposed to the volatility in their investment bank. Jenkins, is a consumer-banker by training, and has been under great investor pressure to cut its costs at its investment bank that was created by the predecessor- Robert Diamond. The unit had posted a 49% dip in its Q1 profit, as the revenue from FICC, which is conventionally the company’s its biggest income source, dwindled.
Weak revenue
Jenkins said that the market also faces structural rather than the cyclical drop & that the investment-banking revenue will still be “weak for a certain period of time.” That particular revenue weakness has also prompted many other European firms like Switzerland’s UBS AG to scale the bank much sooner, and also be rewarded with the gains in stock prices. Barclays PLC is a global financial-services provider that is involved in retail banking, and credit cards, as well as wholesale banking & investment banking, and wealth management & investment management services.
