Barclays announces eclectic board for new ringfenced bank

Barclays has announced that the founder of a chain of shoe-repair stores, a venture capital investor and the chairman of an organic food brand started by the Prince of Wales will be on the board of the new bank it is creating to comply with UK ringfencing rules.

Like all British banks above a certain size, Barclays is having to carve out its consumer-facing operations and hive them off into a separate company to ensure it could be sheltered from any problems in its riskier investment banking operation.

The bank on Thursday announced the non-executive directors that will at the start of next year join the board of its new company, to be called Barclays Bank UK, which is due to be fully launched in April 2018. They include:

• Sir John Timpson, chairman of the eponymous family-owned shoe-repair and key-cutting chain with over 1,900 stores in the UK.

• Avid Larizadeh Duggan, a general partner at GV, the venture arm of Alphabet. She was a co-founder of Boticca, a marketplace for fashion accessories.

• Michael Jary, chairman of Duchy Originals, the organic food range launched by the Prince of Wales that is sold in Waitrose supermarkets. He is also a senior partner and co-founder of OC&C Strategy Consultants and a former board member of Nationwide Building Society.

• Kathryn Matthews, former chief investment officer in Asia Pacific for Fidelity International, the fund manager.

• Andrew Ratcliffe, former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). He used to audit Barclays when he was a partner at PwC.

“Barclays UK has a financial relationship with 24m customers and clients in every community in the UK,” said Sir Ian Cheshire, who was named chairman of Barclays Bank UK earlier this year. “It is therefore crucial that we have a board not only of the highest calibre, but of diverse perspectives and broad experience.”

The executive directors of the new bank will be Ashok Vaswani, its chief executive, and Anna Cross, its finance director.

(Photo: Getty)