The largest British banking group Barclays will fire 19,000 employees within three years. These measures are part of a new strategy of the financial organization, which intends to get rid of less profitable business to reduce expenditures and raise its profitability. In 2014 it plans to eliminate 14,000 jobs instead of 12,000 which the bank announced in February. Additional 2,000 work places will be cut at the investment division of the group, the profit of which fell 49% to £668 million ($1.13 billion) in the first quarter of 2014. By the end of 2016, the investment bank will be downsized by another 5,000 people.
At the same time, Barclays will set up a ‘bad bank’, an internal bank that will consist of non-core and risky assets. It will take on £115 billion ($195 billion) of assets including £90 billion of investment assets and all the European retail branch networks (£16 billion). Non-core assets will eventually be sold or run down.
Barclays’s Chief Executive Antony Jenkins said that these measures are aimed at a ‘bold simplification’. He noted that Barclays “will be a focused international bank, operating only in areas where we have capability, scale and competitive advantage”.
London-based Barclays Bank was established in 1690. The bank’s headcount is 139,000 now. For the first three months of 2014, the profit of Barclays Group fell 5% to £1.7 billion ($2.88 billion).
