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London - Absa [JSE:ASA] parent Barclays on Thursday named retail boss Antony Jenkins as its new chief executive, handing an insider the task of helping to repair the damage caused by a rate-rigging scandal.
Softly-spoken Jenkins, brought in six years ago to turn around the British bank’s credit card business, replaces Bob Diamond, who built up Barclays’s thriving investment bank but resigned as CEO in July after the bank admitted manipulating the Libor benchmark interest rate.
Jenkins was long seen as a frontrunner for the top job despite his lack of experience on the investment banking front - a big profit driver for Barclays, though the division was at the heart of the firm’s recent troubles.
The firm has also recently brought in industry veteran David Walker as its new chairperson to succeed Marcus Agius in November in the wake of the scandal.
“We have made serious mistakes in recent years and clearly failed to keep pace with our stakeholders’ expectations,” Jenkins said in a statement.
Jenkins, an Oxford University graduate who started his career at Barclays before moving to Citi in 1989, added that repairing the damage would “take time”.
Barclays said Jenkins would receive an annual salary of £1.1m ($1.74m), plus up to £2.75m in annual incentive awards plus long-term incentive awards of up to 400% of salary.
Softly-spoken Jenkins, brought in six years ago to turn around the British bank’s credit card business, replaces Bob Diamond, who built up Barclays’s thriving investment bank but resigned as CEO in July after the bank admitted manipulating the Libor benchmark interest rate.
Jenkins was long seen as a frontrunner for the top job despite his lack of experience on the investment banking front - a big profit driver for Barclays, though the division was at the heart of the firm’s recent troubles.
The firm has also recently brought in industry veteran David Walker as its new chairperson to succeed Marcus Agius in November in the wake of the scandal.
“We have made serious mistakes in recent years and clearly failed to keep pace with our stakeholders’ expectations,” Jenkins said in a statement.
Jenkins, an Oxford University graduate who started his career at Barclays before moving to Citi in 1989, added that repairing the damage would “take time”.
Barclays said Jenkins would receive an annual salary of £1.1m ($1.74m), plus up to £2.75m in annual incentive awards plus long-term incentive awards of up to 400% of salary.
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