Barclays chief executive ‘fired’

Antony Jenkins, the chief executive of Barclays, has been fired after falling out with the board over the pace of the bank’s cost cutting.

Board members are believed to have wanted bigger cost cuts and to improve the performance of its investment bank.

Chairman John McFarlane said the bank needed to become more efficient: “What we need is profit improvement. Barclays is not efficient. We are cumbersome.”

In a statement, Barclays said a “new set of skills” was required at the top.

Jenkins has been Barclays’ chief executive since 2012. The bank said a search for his successor was under way.

Barclays’ chairman John McFarlane has been named executive chairman until Mr Jenkins’ successor is appointed.

McFarlane told Kamal Ahmed, the BBC’s business editor, that Jenkins skill set had been suitable when he took the top post but that the firm’s needs had changed.

When the BBC asked him about future job cuts, he did not rule them out.

Nor did he rule out the possibility of branch closures.

“Inevitably, banks are going to have fewer branches than they have now,” McFarlane said.

He also told the BBC that Barclays would not renew the famous Barclays premier league sponsorship when it expires later this year.

McFarlane said Barclays was “leaving value on the table and a new approach is required”.

He cited the bank’s aspiration to boost returns to shareholders. “We therefore need to improve revenue, costs and capital performance.”

The board said it recognised the contribution Jenkins had made over the past three years, and was “extremely grateful to him for bringing the company to a much stronger position”.

But the bank said its non-executive directors had “concluded that new leadership is required to accelerate the pace of execution going forward”.

Jenkins took over at Barclays in the summer of 2012 following the departure of Bob Diamond, who left in the wake of the Libor scandal, reports the BBC.

The bank said Jenkins had inherited a situation which “would have challenged anyone facing the same issues”.

Jenkins said that when he had taken over as group chief executive in 2012 it was a “particularly difficult time for Barclays”.

“It is easy to forget just how bad things were three years ago both for our industry and even more so for us. I am very proud of the significant progress we have made since then,” he said.