According to the official sources of financial market, Barclays Plc is about to shut its Indian equities business, influenced with efforts of cost cutting and profit boosting. The British Bank which has rolled out in 2011, includes research and broking for institutional investors and employs at least 20 people.
A source on terms of anonymity told ET that, the planned closure is part of Chief Executive Jes Staley’s wider plans of cutting cost. However, Barclays is in middle of its three – year cost reduction plan, which constitute dropping of nearly 19000 jobs or about 14% of its workforce, while the media reports says that that bank kept recruitment on hold during November 2015 and started hiring with the start of year 2016.
Barclays Plc which headquartered in London, also has the plan to reduce more jobs in its investment banking unit, most of these cut is expected to be in Asia, as suggests two months old reports of Reuters.
Barclays is also weighing the sale of its Asian private wealth business, for which Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings and Julius Baer are seen as potential bidders, sources told Reuters last month.
The planned shutdown of Barclays’ equities desk in India comes against the backdrop of a drop in the local stock market the broader Mumbai stock market index fell 4 percent in 2015 and tough competition from Indian rivals.
Last week, Societe Generale, France’s second biggest bank by market value, said it would shut its equities research desk in India as part of an internal reorganization.
Barclays, a late entrant to the Indian equities business, had rolled out its equities business in India at a time when sluggish market conditions had hit volumes and fierce competition had driven down fees.
But it had managed to gain market share in the last couple of years by focusing on foreign as well as domestic institutional investors, one of the sources said.
