RTÉ News: Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins to leave

In a surprising move, Barclays (LSE: BARC) (NYSE: BCS.US) announced this morning that it has fired chief executive Antony Jenkins, after only three years at the helm.

Jenkins – known as the “nice guy of banking” – will leave on 17 July and chairman John McFarlane is set to take over the reins until a replacement is found.

The group praised Jenkins – who became CEO in the wake of the Libor scandal – for leading Barclays under “incredibly hard circumstances”, that would have been challenging for anyone in the position.

Mr Jenkins promised to bring a new culture of decency to the bank, although the lender now says it must improve its commercial performance.

Barclays said the non-executive directors led by Sir Michael Rake, deputy chairman and senior independent director, concluded that new leadership is required to accelerate the pace of execution going forward and that McFarlane is ideally qualified in this respect until a permanent successor is appointed.

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However, under an incoming banking regulation published yesterday by City watchdog the Prudential Regulation Authority, a chairman can not be chief executive at the same time. “I am very proud of the significant progress we have made since then”, he said. His promotion to the top job mirrors the role he took on at insurer Avivia during the 2012 shareholder spring when the insurer’s boss was also ousted.

He added: ‘A new approach is required.

The surprise ouster comes just three months after John McFarlane took over as chairman and signalled his intention to speed up its turnaround plan.

“We also need to become more externally focused and deal with the internal bureaucracy by becoming leaner and more agile”, it added.

Back then he said: “What we really need is a hard-driving, energetic organisation with a high performance setting”. McFarlane said would “work particularly closely” with him.

A lifelong retail banker, Mr. Jenkins encountered a cultural chasm when he sought to make dramatic changes to Barclays’s investment bank in his first months on the job.

Mr Jenkins has a background in retail banking, which is considered a much safer area of activity. But the multistage strategy went in fits and starts, and many investors, analysts and staff failed to fully warm to Mr. Jenkins as a leader.

Within the group, there are still question marks over the ultimate size of its investment bank, as well as the strategic importance of businesses outside the United Kingdom such as Barclays Africa.

Jenkins replaced Bob Diamond in July 2012 – who himself was forced to resign after the damaging Libor rate-fixing scandal.