Barclays PLC (, occasionally ) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as five divisions: the UK Consumer Bank, UK Corporate Bank, Private Bank and Wealth Management (PBWM), Investment Bank, and the US Consumer Bank.
Barclays traces its origins to the goldsmith banking business established in the City of London in 1690 by Quakers John Freame and Thomas Gould. James Barclay became a partner in the business in 1736. In 1896, twelve banks in London and the English provinces, including Goslings Bank, Backhouse's Bank and Gurney, Peckover and Company, united as a joint-stock bank under the name Barclays and Co. Over the following decades, Barclays expanded to become a nationwide bank. In 1967, Barclays deployed the world's first cash dispenser. Barclays has made numerous corporate acquisitions, including of London, Provincial and South Western Bank in 1918, British Linen Bank in 1919, Mercantile Credit in 1975, the Woolwich in 2000 and the North American operations of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Barclays has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. According to a 2011 paper, Barclays was the most powerful transnational corporation in terms of ownership and thus corporate control over global financial stability and market competition, with Axa and State Street Corporation taking the 2nd and 3rd positions, respectively. Barclays operates in over 40 countries, employs over 80,000 people.
Barclays UK comprises the British retail banking operations, consumer credit card business, wealth management business, and corporate banking for small, medium and large-sized businesses in the UK. Barclays International consists of Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank (formerly known as Barclays Capital) and the Consumer, Cards & Payments business. The bulge-bracket investment banking business provides advisory, financing and risk management services to large companies, institutions and government clients. It is a primary dealer in Gilts, U.S. Treasury securities and various European government bonds.
According to S&P Global's April 2026 report, Barclays is Europe's fifth largest bank by assets, with $2.078 trillion in assets.
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Name
The bank's name has never included an apostrophe (Barclay's) in its spelling. It was first registered in 1896 as "Barclay and Company, Limited", changed to "Barclays Bank Limited" in 1917 and to "Barclays Bank PLC" in 1982.
History
1690 to 1900
Barclays traces its origins back to 17 November 1690, when two Quakers, John Freame and Thomas Gould, started trading as goldsmith bankers in Lombard Street, London. The name "Barclays" became associated with the business in 1736, when Freame's son-in-law James Barclay became a partner. In 1728, the bank moved to 54 Lombard Street, identified by the "Sign of the Black Spread Eagle", which in subsequent years would become a core part of the bank's visual identity.
The Barclay family were connected with slavery, both as proponents and opponents. David and Alexander Barclay were engaged in the slave trade in 1756. David Barclay of Youngsbury (1729–1809), on the other hand, was a noted abolitionist, and Verene Shepherd, the Jamaican historian of diaspora studies, states that he chose to free his slaves in that colony.
In 1776, the firm was styled "Barclay, Bevan and Bening" and remained so until 1785, when another partner, John Tritton, who had married a Barclay, was admitted, and the business then became "Barclay, Bevan, Bening and Tritton". In 1896, twelve houses in London and the English provinces, notably Goslings and Sharpe, Backhouse's Bank of Darlington and Gurney's Bank of Norwich (the latter two of which also had their roots in Quaker families), united to form Barclays and Co., a joint-stock bank, which at its formation held around one quarter of deposits in English private banks.
1900 to 1945
Between 1905 and 1916, Barclays extended its branch network by making acquisitions of small English banks. Further expansion followed in 1918 when Barclays amalgamated with the London, Provincial and South Western Bank, and in 1919, when the British Linen Bank was acquired by Barclays, although the British Linen Bank retained a separate board of directors and continued to issue its own banknotes (see Banknotes of the pound sterling).
In 1925, the Colonial Bank, National Bank of South Africa and the Anglo-Egyptian Bank were amalgamated and Barclays operated its overseas operations under the name Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas)—Barclays DCO. In 1938, Barclays acquired the first Indian exchange bank, the Central Exchange Bank of India, which had opened in London in 1936 with the sponsorship of the Central Bank of India.
In 1941, during the German occupation of France, a branch of Barclays in Paris, headed by Marcel Cheradame, worked directly with the invading force. Senior officials at the bank volunteered the names of Jewish employees, as well as ceding an estimated one hundred Jewish bank accounts to the German occupiers. The Paris branch used its funds to increase the operational power of a large quarry that helped produce steel for the Germans. There was no evidence of contact between the head office in London and the branch in Paris during the occupation. Marcel Cheradame was kept as the branch manager until he retired in the sixties.
1946 to 1980
In May 1958, Barclays was the first UK bank to appoint a female bank manager. Hilda Harding managed Barclays' Hanover Square branch in London until her retirement in 1970.
In 1965, Barclays established a US affiliate, Barclays Bank of California, in San Francisco.
Barclays launched the first credit card in the UK, Barclaycard, in 1966. On 27 June 1967, Barclays deployed the world's first cash machine, in Enfield; Barclays Bank, Enfield. The British actor Reg Varney was the first person to use the machine.
In 1969, a planned merger with Martins Bank and Lloyds Bank was blocked by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, but the acquisition of Martins Bank on its own was later permitted. Also that year, the British Linen Bank subsidiary was sold to the Bank of Scotland in exchange for a 25% stake, a transaction that became effective from 1971. Barclays DCO changed its name to Barclays Bank International in 1971.
From 1972 until 1980, a minority stake in Banca Barclays Castellini SpA, Milan was owned by the Castellini family. In 1980, Barclays Bank International acquired the remaining stake in Barclays Castellini from the Castellini family.
In August 1975, following the secondary banking crash, Barclays acquired Mercantile Credit Company.
1980 to 2000
Barclays Bank International expanded its business in 1980 to include commercial credit and took over American Credit Corporation, renaming it Barclays American Corporation.
During 1985 Barclays Bank and Barclays Bank International merged, and as part of the corporate reorganisation the former Barclays Bank plc became a group holding company, renamed Barclays Group Plc, and UK retail banking was integrated under the former BBI, and renamed Barclays Bank PLC from Barclays Bank Limited.
In response to the Big Bang on the London Stock Exchange, in 1986 Barclays bought UK stockbroker de Zoete & Bevan and jobbing firm Wedd Durlacher (formerly Wedd Jefferson). They were merged with Barclays Merchant Bank to form Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW). Also that year Barclays sold its South African business operating under the Barclays National Bank name after protests against Barclays' involvement in South Africa and its apartheid government.
Barclays introduced the Connect card in June 1987, the first debit card in the United Kingdom.
In 1988, Barclays sold Barclays Bank of California, which at that time was the 17th-largest bank in California measured by assets, to Wells Fargo for US$125 million in cash.
Edgar Pearce, the "Mardi Gra Bomber", began a terror campaign against the bank and the supermarket chain Sainsbury's in 1994.
Barclays bought Wells Fargo Nikko Investment Advisors (WFNIA) in 1996 and merged it with BZW Investment Management to form Barclays Global Investors. Bob Diamond took charge of the investment banking businesses that year. 80% of Barclays's revenue came from UK retail and commercial banking at that time; Diamond's goal was to compete with US bulge-bracket investment banks, and the firm allowed him to do so despite Diamond's division losing hundreds of millions of pounds in the 1998 Russian financial crisis.
Two years later, in 1998, the BZW business was broken up and the Equity and Corporate Finance divisions were sold to Credit Suisse First Boston: Barclays retained the debt-focused Fixed Income business and Structured Capital Markets which formed the foundation of the rebranded Barclays Capital (BarCap). Barclays Capital had offices in over 29 countries and employed over 20,000 people, with over 7,000 people working in its IT division.
2000 to 2010
In August 2000, Barclays took over the recently de-mutualised Woolwich Building Society, in a £5.4 billion acquisition. Woolwich thus joined the Barclays group of companies, and the Woolwich name was retained after the acquisition. The company's head office remained in Bexleyheath, south-east London, four miles (6 km) from the original head office in Woolwich.
Barclays closed 171 branches in the UK in 2001, many of them in rural communities: Barclays called itself "The Big Bank", but this name was quickly given a low profile after a series of embarrassing PR stunts.
On 31 October 2001, Barclays and CIBC agreed to combine their Caribbean operations to establish a joint venture company known as FirstCaribbean International Bank (FCIB).
In 2003, Barclays bought the American credit card company Juniper Bank from CIBC, re-branding it as "Barclays Bank Delaware". The same year saw the acquisition of Banco Zaragozano, the 11th-largest Spanish bank.
In May 2005, Barclays moved its group headquarters from Lombard Street in the City of London to One Churchill Place in Canary Wharf. Also in 2005 Barclays sealed a £2.6bn takeover of Absa Group Limited, South Africa's largest retail bank, acquiring a 54% stake on 27 July 2005.
In 2006, Barclays purchased the HomEq Servicing Corporation for US$469 million in cash from Wachovia Corp. That year also saw the acquisition of the financial website CompareTheLoan and Barclays announcing plans to rebrand Woolwich branches as Barclays, migrating Woolwich customers onto Barclays accounts and migrating back-office processes onto Barclays systems—the Woolwich brand was to be used for Barclays mortgages. Barclays also exited retail-banking operations in the Caribbean-region which extended as far back as 1837 through selling of its joint venture stake in FirstCaribbean International Bank (FCIB) to CIBC for between $989 million and $1.08 billion.
In March 2007, Barclays announced plans to purchase ABN AMRO, the largest bank in the Netherlands. However, on 5 October 2007 Barclays announced that it had abandoned its bid, citing inadequate support by ABN shareholders. Fewer than 80% of shares had been tendered to Barclays' cash-and-shares offer. This left the consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland Group free to proceed with its counter-bid for ABN AMRO.
2010 to 2020
In July 2013, US energy regulator the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered Barclays to pay £299 million fine penalty for attempting to manipulate the electricity market in the US. The fine by FERC relates to allegations in December 2008.
In May 2014, the Financial Conduct Authority fined the bank £26 million over systems and controls failures, and conflict of interest in relation to the bank and its customers in connection to the gold fixing during the period 2004–2013, and for manipulation of the gold price on 28 June 2012.
In June 2014, the US state of New York filed a lawsuit against the bank alleging it defrauded and deceived investors with inaccurate marketing material about its unregulated trading system known as a dark pool. Specifically, the firm was accused of hiding the fact that Tradebot participated in the dark pool when they were in fact one of the largest players. The state, in its complaint, said it was being assisted by former Barclays executives and it was seeking unspecified damages. The bank's shares dropped 5% on news of the lawsuit, prompting an announcement to the London Stock Exchange by the bank saying it was taking the allegations seriously, and was co-operating with the New York attorney general.
A month later the bank filed a motion for the suit to be dismissed, saying there had been no fraud, no victims and no harm to anyone. The New York Attorney General's office issued a statement saying the attorney general was confident the motion would fail. On 31 January 2016, Barclays settled with both the New York Attorney General's office and the SEC, agreeing to pay $70 million split evenly between the SEC and New York state, admitting it violated securities laws and agreeing to install an independent monitor for the dark pool.
To ward off the effects of Brexit Barclays borrowed £6 billion from the Bank of England between April and June 2017, as part of a post-referendum stimulus package launched in August 2016. In August 2021 Barclays announced a $400 million capital infusion into its business in India, which was the single largest capital infusion into its Indian business in three decades.
Barclays agreed to pay $150 million to resolve an investigation by New York's banking regulator into a trading practice that allowed the bank to exploit a milliseconds-long lag between an order and its execution that sometimes hurt its clients.
2020 to present
In February 2020, it was reported that, in a pilot programme at its London headquarters, the company used tracking software to assess how long employees spent at their desks and warn them if they took excessive breaks. Staff who spent too much time away could find this mentioned on their daily report cards. Following criticisms by staff, the bank said it had taken steps to ensure that individual data would no longer be visible to managers, although the company still holds this data."
The bank faced similar privacy concerns in 2017 when it used OccupEye sensors to track staff through black boxes in their desks.
In September 2020 Barclays invested in Barrenjoey Capital Partners, an Australian investment bank startup. In May 2022 Barclays increased its stake in the firm from 9.9 percent to 18.2 percent.
On 31 October 2021, in a surprise move, group CEO Jes Staley agreed to step down amid investigation of his ties to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He was replaced as group CEO by the Indian-born American banker C. S. Venkatakrishnan, who became the first person of Indian origin to lead Barclays.
In January 2022, François Baroin, mayor of Troyes, became chairman of the French subsidiary of Barclays Bank, where he had served as an adviser since 2018.
On 1 March 2023 Barclays acquired specialist mortgage lender, Kensington Mortgages. Kensington Mortgages, based in Maidenhead, has approximately 600 employees and originated £1.9bn of mortgages during the year ended 31 March 2022.
In July 2023, Arron Banks said that in 2018, Barclays closed his bank accounts, including business accounts, due to his political views, including his support for Brexit.
In February 2024, the bank announced the acquisition of Tesco Bank's credit cards, loans and savings operations, with Tesco retaining its insurance, ATMs, travel money and gift card operations. The transfer was effective from 1 November 2024.
Environmental criticism
In 2017, Barclays faced protests by environmentalists because of its ownership of Third Energy Onshore which planned to extract natural gas using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) at Kirby Misperton in Yorkshire. Barclays later sold Third Energy in 2020 to Alpha Energy.
In 2020, the campaign group ShareAction filed a resolution at Barclays AGM because of its role as Europe's largest funder of fossil fuel companies. Barclays invested $85 billion in fossil fuel extraction and $24 billion in expansion.
Work from home policy
In September 2026, more than 1,000 staff signed a letter organised by Unite to exempt those living more than a 40 minute commute away from coming to the office three days a week. The current policy states thousands of full-time workers must be in the office two days a week.
Operations
In February 2024, Group CEO, C.S. Venkatakrishnan outlined a plan to improve operational and financial performance and improve total shareholder returns by making Barclays simpler, better and more balanced.
As part of this strategy, Barclays was restructured into five divisions:
UK Consumer Bank – Barclays UK, a ring-fenced UK retail bank (Barclays Bank UK PLC), is one of the UK's leading financial brands and includes personal and business banking operations, alongside Barclaycard UK.
Barclays UK Corporate Bank – has a relationship with over a quarter of UK Corporates, providing the financial and advisory capabilities to power the UK's SME and mid-cap businesses.
Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management (PBWM) – comprises a UK wealth offering, offering a range of financial services, including Smart Investor, a digital investing service. The Private Bank is centred in the primary global wealth hubs, providing clients with a range of investing, banking and lending products alongside expert advice.
Barclays Investment Bank – Global Markets and Investment Banking franchises, including international corporate banking, serving multinational corporate and institutional clients globally.
Barclays US Consumer Bank – offers co-branded, small business and private label credit cards, instalment loans, online savings accounts, and CDs.
Until February 2024, Barclays operated as two divisions, Barclays UK (BUK) and Barclays International (BI), supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services (BX).
Barclays UK consists of UK Personal Banking, UK Business Banking and Barclaycard Consumer UK businesses, carried on by a UK ring-fenced bank (Barclays Bank UK PLC) and certain other entities within the Group.
Principal divisions and subsidiaries
Barclays' principal divisions and subsidiaries include:
Barclaycard – global credit card business
Barclays Bank plc – UK corporate bank
Barclays Bank UK plc – UK retail bank
Barclays Bank Delaware (formerly Barclaycard US, originally Juniper Bank, acquired 2003)
Barclays Corporate
Barclays Croatia
Barclays Egypt
Barclays Execution Services
Barclays India
Barclays Indonesia
Barclays Investment Bank
Barclays Bank Ireland – pan-EU entity created after Brexit
Barclays Private Clients International – subsidiary based in the Isle of Man with branches in the Channel Islands
Barclays Mauritius
Barclays National Bank
Barclays Pakistan
Barclays Partner Finance
Barclays Portugal (162 branches)
Barclays Rise (fintech accelerator with locations in New York, London, Manchester, Vilnius(sold), Cape Town, Tel Aviv and Mumbai)
Branches and ATMs
Barclays operates in over 40 countries, in the United Kingdom there are over 200 branches. In the UK, Barclays also offers some personal banking services through branches of the Post Office. Most Barclays branches have 24/7 ATMs. Barclays customers and the customers of many other banks can use Barclays ATMs for free in the UK, although in some other countries fees are charged. Barclays is a member of the Global ATM Alliance, an alliance of international banks which allows each banks' customers to use their ATM or debit card at all other member banks with no ATM access fees when travelling internationally.
Senior management
Chairman: Nigel Higgins (since May 2019)
Chief Executive: C. S. Venkatakrishnan (since November 2021)
The position of group chairman was formed in 1896, along with the formation of Barclay and Company Limited.
Francis Bevan (1896–1916)
Frederick Goodenough (1917–1934)
William Tuke (1934–1936)
Edwin Fisher (1937–1946)
Sir William Goodenough (1947–1951)
Anthony Tuke (1951–1962)
John Thomson (1962–1973)
Sir Anthony Tuke (1973–1981)
Sir Timothy Bevan (1981–1987)
John Quinton (1987–1992)
Andrew Buxton (1993–1999)
Sir Peter Middleton (1999–2004)
Matthew Barrett (2004–2007)
Marcus Agius (2007–2012)
Sir David Walker (2012–2015)
John McFarlane (2015–2019)
The position of group chief executive was formed in 1992; prior to that, the group chairman held executive authority over the group.
Andrew Buxton (1992–1993)
Sponsorships
Barclays was a long time title sponsor of the Premier League (as the FA Barclays Premiership and later Barclays Premier League) which started on the 2003–04 season and ended with 2015–16 season. Barclaycard previously sponsored the league (as the FA Barclaycard Premiership) from 2001 to 2004.
In 2007, Barclays agreed a 20-year naming rights agreement for $400 million for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York City, home of the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty basketball teams. Two years later, due to the slump in the economy the deal was renegotiated to $200 million.
Barclays sponsored the 2008 Dubai Tennis Championships.
Barclays was the sponsor of the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme in London from its inception in 2010 to 2015, as part of a £25 million deal with Transport for London.
In December 2025, Barclays became the headline sponsor of Hampden Park, Scotland’s national stadium.
In February 2026, Barclays was signed as the official banking partner of Williams F1 Team.
Coat of arms
The College of Arms granted arms to Barclays Bank Limited with the following blazoning: