Barclays renueva su banca corporativa en menos de tres años

Barclays is revamping its corporate banking sector less than three years after the last reorganization. This is a final attempt by the British bank to compete with the bigger rivals on Wall Street. According to an internal memorandum, the bank has hired Mike Joo, one of the top bankers at Bank of America, to serve as co-executive director of its investment banking.

According to the memorandum sent by Barclays CEO CS Venkatakrishnan, Joo will direct the investment banking, and Adeel Khan will ascend to co-executive director with responsibility for global markets. Mike has built a solid reputation for delivering results and leading in periods of change and growth, writes Venkatakrishnan. He is widely recognized as a promoter of organizational culture, with a deep commitment to collaboration, integrity, and talent development.

These changes raise questions about the future of some Barclays high executives who were hired to improve the unit's performance. The position of the investment banking within the group has been a subject of disagreement between Barclays executives and investors since 2008 when the bank acquired part of Lehman Brothers after its bankruptcy.

Joo is set to assume the new role in February, subject to regulatory approval, and will be based in New York. He will also be part of Barclays' executive committee. According to the London Stock Exchange, Barclays ranks sixth globally in investment banking fees this year, generating an estimated $2.7 billion in revenue so far in 2026.

However, the entity, which trades on the FTSE 100, still aims to carve a niche in the elite US market, the segment with the highest fees in global investment banking, where it lags behind giants like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. The leadership changes mark the end of the structure introduced by Venkatakrishnan in 2024, which placed the investment banking under the leadership of four co-directors as part of a group reorganization.

This latest reorganization creates uncertainty about the future of two of the group's co-directors, Taylor Wright and Cathal Deasy, who were tasked with improving the investment banking's performance despite the group reducing capital allocated to the unit. They will remain in their positions until Joo assumes his role, according to the memorandum.

Stephen Dainton, the other one of the four co-directors appointed by Venkatakrishnan, announced his resignation from the bank last month, shortly after taking on the role of customer care director. Barclays' investment and subscription fees fell to £2.5 billion in 2025, a drop of more than 20% in the capital markets business. While advisory and capital markets commissions rose in the first half of the year, the business has not matched its US rivals.

Joo, who is also a minority investor in the Buffalo Bills American football team, will join Barclays after two decades at Bank of America, where he rose to co-director of the group's investment banking business. Before that, he led the debt capital markets area in Asia at Credit Suisse after starting his career as an analyst at Goldman.

Bank of America informed its employees this month that Joo was leaving for an external opportunity, the latest in a series of high-level departures. Joo's appointment by Barclays is part of a plan to streamline the investment banking leadership structure, which had been criticized for being too diffuse, with responsibilities shared among several top executives.

Barclays has been trying to improve the profitability of its investment banking by focusing on commission-based advisory work in operations and capital markets, while reducing its dependence on the debt division, which requires greater capital investment. The Financial Times Limited [2026]. All rights reserved. FT and Financial Times are registered trademarks of Financial Times Limited.

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