Published February 12, 2009

Barclays doubles headcount in less than 6 months

It expects to more than double it again to 650 by year-end

By SIOW LI SEN

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(SINGAPORE) Barclays has more than doubled the headcount at its global technology centre at Changi to 250 in less than six months. And it expects to more than double it again to 650 by year-end - a reminder that not all banks are slashing and burning.

Amid the noise of massive losses and vanishing jobs at international banks, Barclays - which this week posted pre-tax 2008 profit of £6.1 billion (S$13.2 billion), down 14 per cent - expects to grow its retail and commercial businesses.

Frits Seegers, chief executive of Barclays global retail and commercial banking, said the Singapore centre will accelerate hiring to reach 1,500 by 2011 as Barclays expands its Asian operations and gains market share in the UK as rival foreign banks pull back.

Last September, the Barclays Business Technology Centre in Changi - its third after London and Johannesburg - had only 110 staff.

Barclays has 49 million customers today, up from 34 million in 2006, with nine million added in 2008 alone. Growth has been mostly organic, Mr Seegers told BT this week.

"Singapore is incredibly important to us" as a global hub for processing and developing systems for worldwide retail and commercial banking, he said. "We have 250 people today. It will be 650 by year-end." And he expects 1,500 by 2011.

The Singapore hub does high-value intellectual work, said Mr Seegers, who heaped praise on the bank's staff here. "Most of all, the people of Singapore,

I feel, when I ask for things to get done, they get done in a good way," he said. Mr Seegers, who joined the British bank in 2006 after six years in Asia, gave an insight into how Barclays has managed to avoid the enormous losses of many of its peers.

It started tightening credit at the end of 2006 and has been very conservative, he said. "I never forgot the pain I learned in Asia," he added, referring to the 1997-98 financial crisis. So while cuts in credit cards and credit lines by US banks will reach US$2 trillion, Barclays' credit card business in the US posted a US$250 million profit in 2008.

In the UK, Barclays last year increased its mortgage market share 15 per cent to 7 per cent as international banks pulled out of the market, he said.

"And in the case of repossessions, Barclays did 160 in 2008."

The bank's loan-to-value home loan book is 4 0 per cent and Mr Seegers expects the new mortgage loan-to-value ratio to rise to 50 per cent.

He sees the global recession getting much worse and concedes that Barclays will be affected - but he also reckons it is the right time to expand, as prices have fallen.

As for the uproar over executive bonuses, Mr Seegers, who will not receive any 2008 bonus, said it is a complex matter.

He accepts that senior people such as himself should join shareholders in their misery and forego any bonus, but said lower- ranked, hard-working staff who achieve their targets should be rewarded.

"I have some single mothers working for me," he said. "No bonus means they cannot go on vacation, after working day and night. I think they should get their bonus."

Barclays has announced a bonus review and said bonuses paid to staff fell 48 per cent last year.