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John McFarlane to hire cost-cutting guru at Barclays
The executive chairman is close to appointing a top enforcer to push thorugh his radical plan to slash costs and make the bank more efficient
John McFarlane, the executive chairman of Barclays, is understood to be close to hiring a strategy and transformation tzar to accelerate cost-cutting at the bank.
Mr McFarlane, who took charge of the bank last month following the ousting of chief executive Antony Jenkins, is to create the new role of group head of strategy within weeks. The identity of the candidate, who has already been identified, is not known, but is thought to be someone Mr McFarlane has previously worked alongside.
The new senior hire – who is unlikely to join the bank’s board but will sit on its executive committee – will mastermind the bank’s strategy and its transformation agenda to create value.
Given Mr McFarlane is initially adopting the majority of Mr Jenkins’ plans for the bank, the new strategy’s chief initial focus will be on cutting costs.
Mr McFarlane is known to have told friends that he believes the bank is inefficient, and that waiting for a new chief executive to solve that problem is not an option.
Headhunter Spencer Stuart is in the process of drawing up a longlist of possible candidates, expected to be complete by early September, with the hope of naming a new chief executive by the turn of the year.
Barclays' chief executive Antony Jenkins lost his job in July, after less than three years in the role (Credit: Bloomberg)
Mr McFarlane is said to favour the need for an external candidate, meaning chief financial officer Tushar Morzaria is unlikely to make any shortlist, despite his interest in the role.
The creation of a new strategy and transformation chief also raises questions over the role of Jonathan Moulds, the former Bank of America Merrill Lynch executive, who was hired by Mr Jenkins in February as chief operating officer. He was brought in to restructure the bank and lead cost-cutting, with a particular focus on the separation required ahead of the UK bank ring fence coming into law in 2019.
Mr McFarlane is launching a drive to create a better customer service ethos at the bank. Although he believes staff are no longer breaking rules in areas such as Libor or PPI, he said last week that there was room for improvement.
“As far as we can discover, we’re not creating any new issues – the cultural change in terms of conduct has improved considerably. I believe we’ve broken the back of this,” he said. “On the other hand, the one word we want to see more of is 'the customer’. It is not a word I hear very often here.”