Office address: 745 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019
Website: www.barclays.co.uk
Year established: 1965
Company type: financial services
Employees: 11,500+ (US)
Expertise: mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, debt financing, equity financing, risk management, research, trading, restructuring, leveraged finance, industry coverage across sectors
Parent company: Barclays PLC
Key people: C.S. Venkatakrishnan (group CEO), Anna Cross (group finance director), Craig Bright (group co-COO), Stephen Dainton (president), Anne Marie Darling (group co-COO), Cathal Deasy and Taylor Wright (global co-heads of investment banking)
Financing status: corporation
Barclays is a global financial services firm with a strong US presence, especially in investment banking. The company offers mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and trading services. Its investment banking division, Barclays Capital, focuses on advisory, financing, and trading for institutional clients.
Barclays set up its first US affiliate, Barclays Bank of California, in 1965 in San Francisco. The company’s roots, however, reach back to London in 1690, when John Freame and Thomas Gould ran a goldsmith banking business on Lombard Street.
By 1736, James Barclay joined the family, and the name became a fixture in British banking. Over time, small family-run banks struggled to compete, so in 1896, twenty of them joined forces to create Barclay and Company Limited.
Quaker families helped shape the firm, bringing business ties and a reputation for trust. By 1896, the merged bank had 182 branches and 806 staff. Continuing mergers made Barclays the third largest bank in Britain by 1920.
Under Frederick Craufurd Goodenough, the bank acquired Colonial Bank, Anglo-Egyptian Bank, and the National Bank of South Africa. In 1925, these were merged to form Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas), which later became Barclays Bank International. At home, Barclays grew by acquiring Martins Bank in 1968 and by hiring more women, who outnumbered men on staff by 1962.
The company continued to evolve, acquiring The Woolwich in 2000 and Juniper Financial in 2004. The company also changed its structure, moving from local offices to regional and then centralized services.
In 1986, it launched its investment banking arm, which became Barclays Capital. This division expanded further in 2008 after acquiring parts of Lehman Brothers. In 2016, the firm focused its strategy on the UK and US, selling several international businesses and reducing its stake in Africa.
By 2018, the firm made its biggest structural changes in decades to meet new UK regulations. The company separated its UK retail and business bank from its international and investment bank.
Barclays Capital offers a broad range of investment banking and market solutions tailored to institutional and corporate clients:
Barclays Capital provides research and digital banking services as part of its global platform. The firm provides tailored solutions to support clients with risk management and financial objectives.
Barclays Capital states that its culture encourages people to be themselves and contribute in meaningful ways. The company also lists these values:
According to Barclays Capital, it aims to build a supportive, inclusive workplace where employees can bring their whole selves to work. Their benefits include:
Barclays Capital also describes valuing unique perspectives and skills, helping teams thrive together. The company shows a sense of belonging and community, encouraging every employee to feel recognized and included.
C.S. Venkatakrishnan is the group CEO of the firm, appointed in 2021. Before this, Venkatakrishnan led global markets and served as co-president of Barclays Bank PLC. Earlier, he worked at JPMorgan Chase in senior roles across asset management, investment banking, and risk.
Here are the key people leading Barclays, each bringing unique experience and focus to their roles:
The board creates Barclays’ strategy and the executive committee carries out those plans.
In 2024, Barclays Capital agreed to pay a $1.25 million fine after Finra found lapses in its fingerprinting and background checks for thousands of employees. The company is now updating its supervisory systems and has already fingerprinted nearly 1,800 staff to meet compliance rules. These changes help Barclays strengthen its internal controls, which support client trust and the firm’s long-term regulatory standing.
The company is also helping lead the surge in global mergers and acquisitions as the AI sector grows. The firm’s bankers are advising on some of the largest deals, such as Alphabet’s $32 billion purchase of Wiz. This activity positions it to support clients in major transactions and strengthens its advisory business for the future.
Now that exchange-traded funds can come to market with relatively little fuss, providers are readying to launch emerging-markets ETFs in what industry observers call an ill-advised attempt to jump on the latest trend.
U.S. bank J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said Thursday it has bought full control of J.P. Morgan Cazenove in a 1 billion pound ($1.67 billion) deal with its joint venture partner, the venerable London financial house Cazenove Group Ltd.
Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC last week launched its first actively managed exchange-traded fund.
Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, assets of the largest managers of real estate investment trusts were first to feel the shock wave of volatile world markets.
iShares, a unit of Barclays Global Investors, today launched an emerging-markets exchange-traded fund: the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Eastern Europe Index Fund (ESR).
Assets in the exchange-traded fund industry totaled about $689 billion as of Oct. 30, down 0.8%, or $5.3 billion, from a month earlier, according to a report last week from State Street Global Advisors.
Investors sidestepped some of their doubts about the strength of an economic recovery and pushed into energy, industrial and materials stocks as commodity prices rose.
A panel of life insurance company chief executives last week assessed how the industry has dealt with the financial crisis, debating the merits of mutual companies versus stock companies.
A German man who founded the hedge fund group K1 was arrested by police amid an investigation into possible fraud that may total some euro200 million ($295.7 million), prosecutors said Thursday.
New opportunities for insurers and asset managers are on the horizon as they seek a way to put a guaranteed wrapper around target date funds, according to an insurance company executive.
Oil prices were up to near $78 a barrel Friday, continuing a weeklong rally amid an unexpected drop in U.S. gasoline inventories.
Exchange-traded-fund assets reached an all-time high of $695 billion at the end of last month, according to data released today by State Street Global Advisors.
Larger financial institutions shedding their asset management business accounted for the bulk of mergers-and-acquisitions activities in the third quarter, a trend that will continue in the months ahead, according to a report today from the financial-institutions group of Jefferies & Co. Inc.
Barclays Global Investors has launched the iShares Charitable Giving Program, which offers clients access to donor-advised funds using pools of its exchange-traded funds.
