Ex-Barclays non-core MD joins former colleagues at restructuring boutique

A former managing director within Barclays non-core investment bank signed up to a boutique that advises financial services on how to sell divisions that are not central to their business.

Giles Godfrey, the former head of non-traded assets within Barclays non-core unit, has joined Palio Financial alongside two other former big-hitting bankers. He is a senior advisor to the firm, according to his public profile, and joins founders Peter Meijer, a former J.P. Morgan banker who left his MD role at Moelis & Company to start the company last November, and ex-Barclays managing director Geoff Smailes.

Palio Financial was set up to advise financial institutions on the disposal of non-core assets and other strategic work, according to an interview with Meijer on Financial News last year. Meijer has a background in restructuring, having worked on portfolio disposals and other restructuring work at Moelis, while Smailes was head of global markets structuring and legacy credit asset trading at Barclays when he left in 2015.

Godfrey joined Barclays in 2008 as a credit trader and left his role in September last year. Barclays non-core unit was a massive undertaking established in 2014 to remove $110bn worth of risk weighted assets from its balance sheet - or around 25% of the total at the time. The bulk (£90bn) were set to be stripped out of the investment bank in areas including non-standard FICC derivatives and some commodities and emerging-markets products.

Godfrey and Smailes have worked together both during their time at Barclays, and at Solent Capital, a hedge fund set up by Smailes where Godfrey worked as a credit trader for four years.

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