Barclays names Wright, Deasy as investment banking co-heads

Bloomberg

Barclays Plc is appointing Taylor Wright and Credit Suisse Group AG veteran Cathal Deasy as its new investment banking chiefs in a major reshuffle of its top dealmaking ranks.
John Miller and Jean-Francois Astier, the current co-heads of investment banking at the UK firm, are set to leave those roles, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. The bank is “in active dialogue about how they will continue to help guide us in senior roles in the organisation,” the memo shows.
Barclays notched record investment banking fees in 2021 and has been seeking to grab share from rivals after rejecting an activist shareholder’s push to shrink the Wall Street division.
It joins rivals including Citigroup Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG in hiring top bankers from Credit Suisse as the Swiss bank goes through a major restructuring that includes spinning out the bulk of its dealmaking business.
The changes will be effective in late March, according to the memo. Deasy was previously co-head of investment banking and capital markets for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Credit Suisse. Wright joined Barclays from Morgan Stanley in 2019.
Astier and Miller were tapped to lead the investment banking unit in July 2021. Astier had previously been global head of capital markets and mergers and acquisitions, while Miller was global head of coverage investment banking.
Last March, the pair set out plans to boost hiring and climb to as high as fourth in dealmaker rankings. But that was interrupted by an industrywide slump in dealmaking. Barclays generated £1.74 billion ($2.1 billion) of fees from advising on mergers and underwriting equity and debt deals in the first nine months of 2022, down 36% from a year earlier.
Still, the firm finished last year in sixth place among Wall Street’s biggest advisory businesses, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That was an improvement from eighth place three years earlier, the data show.