A big cull of investment bankers has been announced at Britain’s Barclays. <br /><br />One in four jobs at its investment division are to go – that is 7,000 people. <br /><br />It is part of a larger shakeup which will cut Barclays workforce by 19,000 over the next three years. <br /><br />Outside of the investment bank, around half of the job cuts will be from branches in UK, Europe and Africa with most of the remainder slashed from operations and IT.<br /><br />The investment layoffs signal the bank is reining in its ambitions to be a Wall Street powerhouse, faced with falling profits in that sector. <br /><br />It will focus more on retail banking, its Barclaycard credit arm and its African business.<br /><br />“We will refocus and resize our investment bank to bring balance to Barclays,” Chief Executive Anthony Jenkins told analysts and investors. “As currently constituted, it is an unacceptable drag.”<br /><br />At the same time Barclays plans to sell or run down 115 billion pounds (140 billion euros) of non-performing assets. They will be moved into a so-called “bad bank”. <br /><br />All of Barclays’ European retail banking operations in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, as well as some corporate and Barclaycard assets will go into the bad bank.<br /><br />with Reuters
