Barclays to Slash A Fifth of Investment Banking Staff

Barclays (LON:BARC) plans to lay off 20 percent of its global investment banking workforce, according to media outlets such as Bloomberg and Reuters, citing sources from the bank.

These cuts come on top of 19,000 planned layoffs that are part of Barclays’ efforts to streamline its operations, reduce costs and boost profitability.

14% of Global Staff to Be Paid Off

The bank is in the middle of a three-year cost-cutting plan and the above figure represents 14 percent of its global workforce. By the end of the year, Barclays will lay off 7,000 staff, plus these new job cuts, most of which will concern staff in Asia, the sources said.

In its report of the news, Bloomberg cited as source the new Chief Executive Officer of Barclays, Jes Staley, who replaced Anthony Jenkins, who in turn was ousted in the summer.

Remaining profitable has been a struggle

Barclays, like other banks implicated in foreign Exchange benchmark manipulation, has been struggling to turn things around and remain profitable, especially in the face of all-new competition from non-traditional financial services providers, such as online Payments companies and peer-to-peer lending platforms.

Core Business Supports Earnings

Despite these troubles, Barclays turned in a healthy 14 percent annual improvement in its net profits for the latest quarter, to September, on revenues of $29.13 billion. The bank then said that the positive result was attributable to its core business operations, adding that non-core business suffered a 95 percent drop in revenues, with the net result in the red.