Barclays to cut 7,000 jobs at Investment Bank by 2016

LONDON. KAZINFORM Barclays Plc (BARC) will cut 7,000 jobs at its investment bank, about a quarter of the total, as Chief Executive Officer Antony Jenkins tries to revive profit by reducing the lender's dependence on the unit.

The bank will eliminate 14,000 positions across the firm this year, up from the 12,000 cuts it announced in February, Barclays said in a statement today. The company will create a bad bank to dispose of 115 billion pounds ($195 billion) of assets, including parts of its fixed-income, currencies and commodities derivatives operations as well as its European consumer arm. The plan will cut the investment bank's share of the firm's assets to 30 percent by 2016 from about 50 percent, Bloomberg reports.

Jenkins, a consumer banker by training, has been under pressure from investors to scale back the investment bank, which this week posted a 49 percent drop in pretax profit. He's starting to dismantle the fixed-income dominated investment bank created by his predecessor, Robert Diamond, as investors reward lenders that scale back in that area.

"The revised strategy is sensible and should be well received," Andrew Coombs, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in London, wrote in a note to clients. "The shift in business mix from investment banking toward retail and commercial could potentially lead to a re-rating in Barclays' shares."

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