Layoffs Watch '15: Barclays

John McFarlane's reputation for telling staff to GTFO precedes him.
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In addition to the bank's CEO, who was pushed out this week, Barclays is expected to make a whole buncha cuts on chairman John "Mack the Knife" McFarlane's watch.

...the FCA Register shows that Barclays’ UK investment bank cut just 92 registered staff out of a total of 1,845 between May 2014 and May 2015. The pace of change hasn’t exactly been rapid so far. Under McFarlane, this is likely to change. Although he said...that he’s “very happy” with the investment banking business which is an important part of Barclays, the bank’s new executive chairman has a reputation for cost-cutting. At ANZ, McFarlane cut the overall cost ratio from 65% to 45% and shrank the investment bank. At Aviva, he reportedly divided the company up into small cells and worked out which were profitable and which weren’t...Now is not a good time to be a middle manager at Barclays. McFarlane used his inaugural interview as executive chairman to lambast Barclays’ bureaucracy. He said the bank has 375 “decision making committees” and that it needs “energy and speed” instead. He also described Barclays as “cumbersome” and “not efficient” and in possession of a “very large bureaucracy.”

John McFarlane’s plan for Barclays investment bank [eFinancial]

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