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Jes Staley
- Barclays will begin its formal search for a new CEO to succeed Jes Staley, The Financial Times reported.
- Plans for Staley to leave the bank by 2021 were already in the works, but there is a new sense of importance and speed in the search after an FCA probe announced this month it would look into Staley's relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, The Financial Times reported.
- The successor will need a backgrund in investment banking, which constitutes about half of the bank's revenue, according to The Financial Times.
British bank Barclays is on the hunt for a new CEO.
The bank is about to call in headhunters in order to start its formal search for a new leader to replace current CEO Jes Staley, The Financial Times reported Monday, citing two people briefed on the plans.
A probe by the Financial Conduct Authority into Staley's dealings with pedophile investor Jeffrey Epstein motivated the bank's board to get the process underway, a person told The Financial Times, though plans for Staley to leave the bank were already in place before the FCA announced its probe this month. Staley has said internally that he plans to leave the bank by 2021, and that could happen in May of that year at the annual meeting, the people said.
But finding the right successor for the British bank could involve some distinct challenges. Barclays wants its next leader to have experience in investment banking, the branch of the bank that drives half of total revenue, The Financial Times reported. But many top investment banking executives hail from the US, where compensation packages for CEOs are much larger than in the UK, The Financial Times reported.
If Barclays hires from outside the bank, it may also have to pay a "golden hello," the term for when a bank makes up for expected income a hire loses by switching firms, but those buyouts are unpopular among investors and policians in the UK, The Financial Times reports.
Barclays will likely hire Spencer Stuart or Egon Zehnder, headhunting companies, to replace Staley, and the entire process could take around a year, the people told The Financial Times.
If the FCA probe into Staley requires him to leave earlier than the bank is ready for, it will appoint an interim head, one of the people told The Financial Times. Staley worked with Epstein from 2000 to 2013, losing contact by 2015, while Staley headed JPMorgan's private bank, at which Epstein was a client, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The board stands behind Staley, The Journal reported.
During his tenure at the bank, Staley built up the investment banking division, pushing back on attacks from activist investor Edward Bramson, who would rather see that business shrink, The Financial Times reported. He led Barclays to hit a 9% return on tangible equity, a core target for the bank, last year, the FT reported. But the bank's shares have lost around a quarter of their value under Staley's leadership, and he has been the subject of two regulatory investigations, The Financial Times reported.