Barclays Capital: Profile and Culture

Corporation Overview:

Barclays is a British bank that was founded more than 300 years ago in London, UK, and the group headquarters remain in London to this day. It is essentially made up of two major clusters: “Global Retail Banking” and “Corporate and Investment Banking and Wealth Management”, which includes Investment Banking.

Barclays Capital (“Barcap”) is the name for the Investment Banking division of Barclays, which includes everything from strategic advisory (a.k.a. mergers and acquisitions), financing, risk management, bonds, commodities, index products, loans, securitisation, etc. It also has a relatively successful private equity arm making direct investments, called Barclays Private Equity, which is however expected to be spinned off in the near future.

Barclays' CEO is Bob Diamond, an American who was previously vice-chairman of Credit Suisse. The head of the M&A business for Europe, Middle East and Africa is Tom King, who was recently hired from Citigroup.

Barclays Capital headquarters are based in Canary Wharf, and they also have 29 offices with 25,500 employees around the globe in places such as New York, Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, etc.

In September 2008, Barclays Capital acquired Lehman Brother's US business for $1.35bn (note: the European and Asian business was acquired by Nomura)

Strengths and Rankings

Strengths

> The merger with Lehman has created a globally competitive platform and projected the bank in the top of the league tables in the US, and improved its position significantly in Europe

> The combined entity is now an investment bank (Lehman) + a balance sheet (Barclays), so Barclays Capital is able to leverage its lending relationships to obtain M&A business, which is a significant advantage to get new business.

> Flexible and open culture that allows you to rotate across teams, move internationally.

> Probably one of the best bank to get exposure and understand financing while working in M&A

> Relative Stability: growing business supported by a stable retail banking income, so unlikely to undergo massive employee cuts going forward

League Tables 2010

Global M&A: #9
European M&A: #13
US M&A: #7
Asia-Pacific M&A: #10