Bramson the corporate raider is not wrong about Barclays

If you know my personal history with Barclays, you may be wondering whether I’m for or against Edward Bramson. To recap, I’m a former second-generation employee of the bank as well as the custodian of a family shareholding that’s never likely to be sold — and nowadays, rather miraculously given everything that’s happened to me and the bank since I left 27 years ago, a recipient of its pension largesse. Bramson, by contrast, is a Johnny-come-lately: a New York-based ‘activist investor’ whose firm Sherborne has become Barclays’ third largest shareholder by building a 5.5 per cent stake, and who is seeking a seat on the bank’s board at next week’s annual meeting. His aim is to demand from inside that Barclays’ investment banking arm should be scaled back in order to generate better returns for shareholders.

Bramson has the scary, chiselled, pale-eyed look of a corporate raider from Holly-wood — but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Embattled chief executive Jes Staley declared investment banking to be a pillar of his recovery strategy for Barclays three years ago — with a target 10 per cent return on equity, but barely above 7 per cent achieved so far. In 2017 he appointed Tim Throsby, with whom he previously worked at JPMorgan, to head the division; Throsby embarked on a hiring bonanza that made City headhunters sing, bringing in upwards of 80 expensive new ‘managing directors’ from Goldman Sachs and elsewhere, particularly to beef up securities trading. But Throsby himself — an Australian described as ‘extremely rough’ by one former colleague — left abruptly last month. And now there’s talk of cracking down on pay and bonuses to bring costs back under control; more high-profile departures are expected to follow.

Here we go again, mutter veteran observers who recall the revolving-door turmoil of BZW, where I was an unhappy director.