Those 600 roles at Barclays could be a little way off

Barclays has now officially announced the creation of its shared services hub in Glasgow, which will create an additional 600 roles north of the border, eventually taking the total number of employees to 2,000.

As we've alluded to before, Glasgow has been the beneficiary of Barclays' plans to pool a number of back office functions supporting both Barclays Wealth and its investment bank Barclays Capital.

The 600 new roles will be aided by a Regional Selective Assistance grant of 6.6m, which is dependent upon Barclays meeting job-creation milestones over a number of years. Over 2,000 people will eventually be employed in the bank's Aurora HQ in Glasgow.

While a hiring spree of this scale is not to be sniffed at, we understand that the first tranche of jobs - believe to be around 300 - have largely already been filled. What's more, only another 30 roles are due to be released for the remainder of the year, sources close to the situation tell us.

Any further significant recruitment drives are therefore likely to start next year at the earliest.

However, there's another potential upside to this recruitment activity.

Barclays has been tapping other investment operations firms in Glasgow and Edinburgh, such as BNP Paribas, Citi Morgan Stanley and State Street, for new recruits, the result of which is likely to create a need for replacement hires.

Barclays has also been filling a good proportion of the roles through graduate hires, however.

Ian Axe, head of operations at Barclays Capital and Barclays Wealth, said: "This example of collaboration between the investment banking and wealth management divisions at Barclays is an exciting development for clients, staff and potential employees in Glasgow and across Scotland."