Barclays confirms that senior staff targeted for redundancies

12 February 2013

3 minute read

Barclays confirms that senior staff targeted for redundancies

Barclays' results are out, as are the details of its 'Transform' restructuring plan. Barclays is cutting 1,800 jobs from its investment bank, or around 7% of the total. Overall, 55% of the jobs will go in the front office, with the remainder going in the back office. Senior staff will be most affected.

320 of the new cuts will come in IDB (investment banking and capital markets) and only 230 will come in Barclays' equities business. Across equities and IDB 365 of these people could be "strategically realigned", which a spokeswoman for Barclays told us means that they may be made to work in other areas of the bank.

Within equities and IBD, Barclays said 15% of managing directors and directors will be let go. This implication is that senior staff will be let go at twice the rate of staff lower down the organisation.

Notably, 1,250 of the layoffs will happen outside equities and IBD: the fixed income business will also take a significant hit.

Jenkins also said that Barclays intends to continue as part of a small group of global full service investment banks. However, this only applies in the US and UK. Elsewhere, Barclays doesn't want to be a full service investment bank - it wants to be an "appropriately-sized" bank to "reflect market opportunities." In other words, Barclays' bankers in Asia and continental Europe can expect to suffer disproportionately during the layoffs.

Jenkins also stated that: the commodities business is being "repositioned" to "focus on core banking, financing and risk management activities, and smart physical activities," and that the structured capital markets business is being closed (The structured capital markets business was best known for its hard work helping corporates reduce their exposure to tax.).

These were the other notable points from Barclays' full year results and results presentation this morning.

The average bonus in Barclays' investment bank was £54k for 2012. In rest of the Barclays group, excluding the investment bank, the average bonus was only £4k. As we noted yesterday, there is tension between investment bankers and retail bankers at Barclays, with pay a particular source of contention. This explains why.

Bonuses in Barclays’ investment bank are down 20% on last year.

Barclays has cut the compensation ratio in the investment bank from 47% to 39%.

Barclays' overall bonus pool is down only 14%. In total, 47% is deferred, versus 42% last year.

M&A and capital markets revenues only rose 5% year-on-year at Barclays in 2012. This looks low. At Goldman Sachs, combined M&A and capital markets revenues rose 13% over the same period.

AUTHORSarah Butcher

Global Editor

2 comments

an
ana
13 February 2013
GBP1.7b cost reduction via 3900 jobs equates to GBP435k per headcount that is cut. In SG terms, that's S$870k per headcount.
MDs could be paid that much, but there really arent that many MDs to cut. Directors, on the other hand, earn anything from $250k to $500k per annum (basic salaries only).... so that is unlikely to be sufficient to add up to GBP1.7b cost reduction target.
I think there will be some significant cuts in basic salaries.... like 30-50% pay cut.
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se
sensiblenumbers
12 February 2013
"M&A and capital markets revenues only rose 5% year-on-year at Barclays in 2012. This looks low. At Goldman Sachs, combined M&A and capital markets revenues rose 13% over the same period."
This makes sense - M&A volumes were zilch so the fee pie would have come from capital markets, ie bonds. Barclays is a top player in the field, whereas GS has only started focusing on that platform relatively recently. So for growth to follow a converging pattern, would make sense.
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