Barclays bank on Thursday announced a fresh shake-up of its senior staff, including the departure of its head of investment banking, in the wake of last year's Libor rate-rigging scandal. Barclays said Rich Ricci, the head of its investment banking unit, and Tom Kalaris, who runs its wealth-management arm and US business, would retire in June.
"Subsequent to Barclays' publication of the outcomes of its strategic review on 12 February, the bank has today announced changes to the senior management," the bank said in a statement. Barclays is creating a new role of chief executive of Barclays' US operations, which includes investment banking and wealth management businesses. Skip McGee, a long-time executive at Lehman Brothers before Barclays bought the Wall Street firm out of bankruptcy protection in 2008, will take up the new role.
Barclays was plunged into crisis in June 2012, when it was fined £290 million by British and US regulators for attempted manipulation of Libor and Euribor interbank rates between 2005 and 2009. The scandal sparked the resignations of three Barclays senior board members, including Bob Diamond as chief executive. He was replaced by Antony Jenkins, who was formerly head of retail and business banking.
"Since I became group chief executive, a major area of focus for me has been to streamline and improve how the bank is managed, while strengthening control," Jenkins said in Thursday's statement. Ricci was the most senior banker remaining from Diamond's time in charge. Under their watch, the Libor system was found to have been open to abuse, with some traders lying about borrowing costs to boost trading positions or make the bank seem more secure.
Barclays has already said that it plans to axe at least 3,700 jobs this year after plunging into the red in 2012. The bank employs about 140,000 staff world-wide. The bank in February reported a loss after tax of £1.04 billion for 2012 compared with a net profit of £3.01 billion in 2011, as it took a vast £4.6-billion charge on the rising value of its own debt.