This weekend, people have been at pains to distance themselves from the top jobs at Barclays.

Rich Ricci, the head of the investment bank, has ruled himself out, Michael Rake doesn't want to step up to chairman and, while the board (and headhunters Spencer Stuart) turn their focus to external candidates, Mike Smith, chief executive of ANZ, has already said that he has no interest in the job.

Employees of Barclays Capital should feel slightly reassured that Ricci instead intends to focus on the investment bank. The should also feel comforted by the ‘town hall’ meeting in Hong Kong on Friday, during which Ricci attempted to boost morale.

“What Rich has done is say, we had a great investment bank two weeks ago, and we still have a great investment bank now,” a Barclays source told the Telegraph. “Nothing has changed. The things that have happened cannot be erased, but part of the culture is the way in which we will react to events and keep going.”

This is all strangely reminiscent of the memo put out by the bank a week or so ago, when it reiterated that “our strategy and business model were right for Barclays before recent events, and they remain right for Barclays now.” Such platitudes often precede something bad.

A shift in culture

For the time being, staff should be concerned with an upcoming probe into the working practices at the bank. Anthony Salz, a former senior partner at lawyers Freshfields, is set to lead an enquiry and a major law firm will be drafted into assist. The details will be released today, but the idea is that a new code of conduct will eventually be established.

This is also accompanied by the creation of a Business Practices committee. This will be split into three areas – one, lead by global research head Larry Kantor and corporate banking chief John Winter, will define what is “good behaviour” in the bank. More worryingly, the other two, which Ricci will lead, will focus on which businesses to keep, as well as compensation and rewards policies.

The reaction within Barclays appears to be one of defiance, with the Telegraph quoting two senior investment bankers rejecting the notion that “the culture is twisted”. But if Barclays is going out of its way to show that the ‘no jerks’ policy is still firmly in place, it won’t be helped by an article claiming that BarCap was the “wild wild West” in 2008 – a bucket shop where quants were drafted in to create complex new products and clients were viewed as “lambs to the slaughter”.

Why cuts could be (finally) coming

It’s also Barclays' results on Friday and many are predicting that its equities division, which (lest we forget) has been heavily built up of the past few years, is predicted to post a decline in revenues of 35%.

If Barclays follows other banks’ lead this quarter, redundancies seem sadly inevitable. As we’ve pointed to previously, analysts claim that its costs are too high, that its revenues are too low, that it hasn’t adjusted to the new reality and is still paying comparatively highly and refusing to make job cuts.

Nonetheless, Barclays’ investment bank has proven the key driver of profits at the firm years. Investec analyst Ian Gordon said recently that it accounted for “44-78% of underlying Group profits in every year 2009-2014e” and that its costs, despite all the hiring, have remained relatively in control.