Barclays plans to slash as many as 2,000 jobs as it pushes ahead with a £1billion cost-cutting mission.
The redundancies at the bank are mainly set to hit back-office roles in departments such as compliance, human resources and legal.
The layoffs are not expected to impact customer-facing branch staff or investment bankers, according to initial reports from Reuters.
Speculation of job cuts come just weeks after the FTSE 100 lender warned of the need to restructure to boost profits and dividend payments to shareholders.
Last month Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan – known as Venkat – said the bank is looking for ‘efficiencies’ as it seeks to reduce ‘structural costs’.
Cost-cutting: The redundancies at the bank are mainly set to hit back-office roles in departments such as compliance, human resources and legal
‘We always modulate the size of our workforce everywhere in the world in which we are and that’s what we will continue to do,’ he said when asked about jobs.
Barclays, meanwhile, reported a 16 per cent slump in third quarter profits to £1.3billion as it was hit by a slowdown at its investment banking arm and shrinking margins at its UK high street division.
Russ Mould, investment director at broker AJ Bell, said job cuts show how Venkat is ‘feeling the pressure’.
After a rocky few months, analysts had been expecting between £500m and £1.5billion of costs to be trimmed.
Benjamin Toms, analyst at RBC, said: ‘They had already told us the cost plan but what they didn’t tell us was how large or what the benefit would be. What we appear to have got now is the other side of that initial announcement, which will be useful for investors as they start to map out the size of the potential structural cost actions.’
The bank employs about 87,000 worldwide, with about 44,000 in the UK.
Barclays declined to comment on any cuts.
Banks have been feeling the pressure of a wider slowdown in dealmaking, which has plagued the Square Mile for much of this year.
And Venkatakrishnan, who took over from Jes Staley in November 2021, warned this misery would continue for the City. Speaking on a podcast last month, he said a revival was still looking ‘a little further away,’ adding that the dearth of deals was holding back front-office recruitment.
