Barclays CEO: We Were Too Aggressive, Too Self-Serving
Assistant News Editor, CNBC.com
Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins has admitted the bank was too aggressive and too self-serving in recent years.
The bank which paid a fine of 290 million pounds for manipulating the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and was caught up in the payment protection insurance scandal, has been trying to turn a new leaf.
Jenkins, who took over as CEO in August, said the company was addressing its past mistakes.
"We were too aggressive, we were too short-term focused and too self-serving," Jenkins told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"The industry, and Barclays, got it wrong on occasions," he added.
Barclays put its U.K. investment banking staff on notice for another round of job cuts on Tuesday. The bank has not confirmed the amount of job losses but a reported 2,000 are at risk.
According to Reuters, Barclays is also cutting at least 70 jobs from its Asian investment bank.
Jenkins will unveil a new strategic plan for the banking group next month and said he couldn't get into specifics about the recent job cuts.
"I'll be talking in detail on February 12 about all this," he said.
He reiterated that Barclays would continue to be a universal bank with a "significant and large investment bank" within it and said he would "tell the whole story" on that date.
Called the "Transform Program," Jenkins said the review had involved looking at some 75 businesses around the globe and seeing "which ones we are happy with, the ones we might want to exit and the ones we might want to re-tool in some way."
He told CNBC that the bank had undergone changes in its working culture, values and behavior and anyone within the company that didn't agree with the new code of conduct would be out of a job.
"Where I find people not living up to those values, those behaviors and our purpose, they will leave the organization."
