The City has long had a love-hate relationship with banks making forays into investment banking and no lender has had more chops and changes to its trading arm in recent years than Barclays.
The commitment to its investment bank seemed to have been settled, though, when Barclays hired Jes Staley, a former investment banker and JP Morgan bigwig, as its chief executive in 2015, replacing the retail banker Antony Jenkins. The good times were apparently back for the old Barclays Capital business.
Then last month it emerged that the US activist investor Edward Bramson had become one of Barclays biggest shareholders, leading to speculation that he was targeting an overhaul of the company’s investment bank as part of a campaign to improve returns.
First-quarter