Barclays created an enigma
It’s a mystery how the bank’s CEO has left investors with so much uncertainty and confusion over strategy
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THE way it goes normally is, someone says: Do you want the good news or the bad news? Last month, Barclays offered some bad news and left it at that.
It’s two years this month since CS Venkatakrishnan, who goes by Venkat, was thrust into the chief executive officer role after Jes Staley suddenly resigned because he’d been less than open about his friendship with accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It’s the right time for Venkat to set his own aims for the UK bank, having initially stuck with the strategy set by Staley.
A good way to do this would be to announce a review with certain parameters and some goals in mind – and set a date for the reveal. What investors have got from Barclays in recent months instead was a leak that strategy consultants from Boston Consulting Group had been hired but with scant detail of what they were looking for; then some reports that Barclays was considering options for its payments business; and finally, at third-quarter results last month, a warning that the bank might take a chunky restructuring charge in the final quarter of the year.
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