Transforming Life at Barclays

Just two weeks into his new job as Chief Executive at Barclays, Antony Jenkins has written to his employees urging them to

            “Think about customers feelings”.

Great idea Antony, but maybe Barclays' staff would be more kindly disposed towards their customers if the letter had not come at the same time as a massive programme of 3,700 job losses!

Antony Jenkins

Barclays has been at the centre of a huge scandal in recent months, receiving unwelcome publicity for its role at the centre of Liborgate, and for its involvement in the industry-wide PPI mis-selling scandal.  Barclays was not the only bank to be affected by these events, but it was one of the hardest-hit, suffering a record-breaking fine of £290 million from international financial regulators.

As the crisis deepened, Marcus Agius, Bob Diamond and Jerry del Missier all resigned from top roles at the stricken bank, and in recent days Finance Director Chris Lucas has also announced he is to retire once a successor has been appointed.

Antony Jenkins now takes on the mammoth task of rebuilding customer confidence along with Barclays’ public reputation and media profile. On Tuesday February 12 he revealed his plans for “building a better Barclays”, which will focus on a program of changes called Project Transform. This three-stage project comes if the wake of an emergency reviews of Barclays' investment practices, and will consist of

1. Turnaround
2. Return Acceptable Numbers
3. Sustain Forward Momentum

Mr Jenkins’ 5 year mission is to change the entire culture at the banking giant, rebuild its shattered reputation and turn it into the ‘go-to’ bank for good customer service.

At the public launch of Transform he defined the new approach in these words:

“Our values are simple: respect, integrity, service, excellence and stewardship. These are not just words. We have defined the explicit behaviours we expect colleagues to exhibit if they are living up to these values”.

"This is not window dressing or PR. They define the work we will do and the work we won't do. They define the way we hire, develop, promote and reward our people. We never want to be in a position again of rewarding people for activity that is inconsistent with our values."

He stressed his commitment to “universal banking” and to the UK Government’s plan for a ring-fence to protect small depositor and current account customers from any risky investment activity. Barclays' much criticised and controversial tax avoidance unit is to be closed, and the bank will no longer trade in ‘soft’ commodities such as food.

To put the job losses into perspective, Barclays is a financial multi-national currently employing around 140,000 staff in all. 1,800 jobs will be cut from Barclays' investment arm, largely in Asia, with the other 1,900 going from its European retail and business banking services.

It looks like Mr Jenkins' strategy is working already: the plan was greeted by financial analysts as a ‘beacon of light’ in a dark and depressed financial services market, and  investors cheered as their Barclays shares soared by over 25p by the close of the day.