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Barclays to shed 'non-core' Spanish business

George Mills
George Mills - [email protected]
Barclays to shed 'non-core' Spanish business
Anthony Jenkins, Group Chief Executive of Barclays bank, during an interval in a media conference in central London in February 2013. Photo: Carl Court/AFP

UK bank Barclays on Thursday announced plans to seriously streamline its business, with the company's Spanish operations now considered surplus to requirements.

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The bank plans to shed 19,000 jobs globally by 2016 and move £115 billion (€140 million, $195 million) of assets — including Barclay's crisis-hit Spanish subsidiary — into a basket of "non-core operations".

These will eventually be sold off or wound down.

"This is a bold simplification of Barclays," said the bank's chief executive Antony Jenkins of the bank's plans. "We will be a focused international bank, operating only in areas where we have capability, scale and competitive advantage."

A spokesperson for Barclays told The Local that the bank could provide no further information on the future of its Spanish operations at this time.

That spokesperson could not comment on recent rumours in the Spanish press that banks including Sabadell or Bankinter might be interested in buying out that part of the bank focusing on wealthy customers.  

The bank with some 2,800 staff and 271 offices in Spain had contacted possible advisers including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley to get a feel for what the bank might fetch on the market, Spanish dailies El País and Expansión reported in early April.

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