Alistair Currie has been named as chief operating officer of Barclays, replacing Mark Ashton-Rigby, as part of a management reorganization led by Chief Executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan.
Vim Maru, who arrives from Lloyds Banking Group, will succeed Currie as the head of the lender’s consumer banking and payments department.
The decision promotes an executive from the bank’s consumer division to one of its most influential positions at a turning point in the protracted dispute over resource allocation between that unit and Barclays’ flashier but riskier investment bank.
Venkatakrishnan stated on November 29 that the investment bank “may shrink relative to the rest of Barclays” over time, a departure from the former CEO Jes Staley’s unwavering support for the investment bank.
Barclays investors are divided about the allocation of resources to the investment bank as opposed to the more conservative retail and commercial banking operations, with one activist unsuccessfully advocating for the investment bank to be scaled back.
In previous years, Staley’s claim that the investment bank delivered “counter-cyclical” benefits by doing well in difficult markets has been validated, but the unit’s reputation was marred this year by a mistake that resulted in fines for selling more securities than permitted in the United States.
While Venkatakrishnan is being treated for cancer, the executive committee of senior management at Barclays has assumed a more prominent role in the bank’s operations.
The CEO of the British bank, known internally as Venkat, announced last month that he would undergo 12 to 16 weeks of therapy for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but that his prognosis was optimistic.
Currie will also oversee BX, the bank’s operation that provides technology and other support services to all Barclays divisions.
According to Barclays’ website, Currie was born in Scotland, raised in Hong Kong, and worked for HSBC for 18 years before joining Australian institution ANZ to assist on its digital transformation. In 2017, he joined Barclays.